Trial And Error The Autobiography

Keep Your Card in This Pocket:

Books will be issue^^ only on presentation of proper
library cards. ^

Unless labeled otherwise, books may be retained
for two weeks. Borrowers finding books marked, de-
faced or mutilated are expected to report same at
library desk; otherwi^ the last borrower will be held
responsible for all imperfections discovered.

The card holder is responsible for all books drawn
on this card.

Penalty for over-due books 2c a day plus cost of
notices.

Lost cards and change of residence must be re-
ported promptly.

Public LH>rary

Kansas City. Mo.

Trial and Error

Trial and Error

*

Photo by A. lliinnielrcich

CJ[AIM WiUZM ANN

TRIAL AND ERROR

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY

OF

CHAIM WEIZMANN

HARPER & BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

TRIAL AND ERROR, THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CHAIM WEIZMANN

COPYRIGHT^ 1949, BY THE WEIZMANN FOUNDATION
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

ALL RIGHTS IN THIS BOOK ARE RESERVED. NO PART OF THE BOOK MAY BE REPRODUCED
IN ANY MANNER WHATSOEVER WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION EXCEPT IN THE CASE
OF BRIEF QUOTATIONS EMBODIED IN CRITICAL ARTICLES AND REVIEWS. FOR INFORMATION
ADDRESS HARPER & BROTHERS

FIRST EDITION

L-X

\^v

FOR

MY WIFE

— MY COMRADE AND LIFE COMPANION

^ JS \ '■

JAH ^ 1 VA

Acknowledgment

These pages have been written over a long period of time and in a
variety of places, in London, Rehovoth, and New York. Book One was
completed in 1941 ; Book Two in 1947. I have left the material mi-
changed and added an epilogue which was written in August 1948.
In the preparation of these Memoirs I have had the assistance of three
persons whose services and friendship I desire to acknowledge with deep
gratitude: Miss Doris May, my faithful secretary for many years, to
whom I dictated the first draft of almost the whole of Book One, and
who checked all the data and relevant documents; my friend Meyer
Weisgal, but for whose insistent prodding and continuous help this task
might still be awaiting completion ; last but not least I owe a deep debt
of gratitude to my friend, the gifted writer and lecturer, Maurice Samuel,
who worked with me in Rehovoth through the summer of 1947 on the
drafting of Book Two and the final revision of the whole.

Chaim Weizmann

vi

Table of Contents

BOOK ONE

CHAPTER I Earliest Days 3

2 Schooldays in Pinsk 16

3 I Turn Westward 29

4 The Coming of Herzl 43

5 Geneva Years 55

6 End of Geneva Days 74

7 New Start in England 93

8 Taking Root 109

9 Return to Realities 1 2 1

10 The Eve of the War 136

1 1 Shock and Recovery 146

12 Assimilationists and Zionists 156

13 Internal Zionist Strains 164

14 Working for the Government 17 1

15 Toward the Balfour Declaration 176

16 From Theory to Reality 185

17 Opera Bouffe Intermezzo 195

18 The Balfour Declaration 200

BOOKTWO

CHAPTER 1 9 The Zionist Commission — ^Anticipation and

Realities 2 1 1

20 The Zionist Commission — Challukkah Jewry 225

21 The Zionist Commission — ^The Positive Side 232

22 Postwar 240

23 Palestine-Europe-America 252

24 Cleveland and Carlsbad 265

25

The Struggle About the Mandate

279

20

Trial and Error

294

27

The Jewish Agency-

304

28

Foundations

315

29

Attack and Repulse

330

30

Demission

337

31

A Strange National Home

346

32

Scientists — and Others

349

33

Return to Office

361

34

Mediterranean Intrigue

365

35

The Permanent Mandates Commission

375

36

Riot and the Peel Commission

379

37

Toward Nullification

388

38

The White Paper

401

39

War

413

40

The First War Years

417

41

America at War

426

42

Peace and Disillusionment

434

43

Science and Zionism

444

44

The Decision

452

45

The Challenge

460

Epilogue

469

Index

483

Book One

CHAPTER 1

Earliest Days

The Village among the Pripet Marshes — My People — My First
Teachers — The Pale of Settlement — Grandpa — The Timber
Trade — My Father — The Rafts — The Peasants and the Jews
— The Two Worlds — First Zionist Dreams — My Mother —
Servants — Jewish Students, Zionists, Assimilationists, Revolu-
tionaries — Mother's Role in Our Lives and Her Later Years —
My Father's Influence,

The townlet of my birth, Motol, stood — and perhaps still stands — on
the banks of a little river in the great marsh area which occupies much
of the province of Minsk and adjacent provinces in White Russia; fiat,
open country, mournful and monotonous but, with its rivers, forests and
lakes, not wholly unpicturesque. Between the rivers the soil was sandy,
covered with pine and furze ; closer to the banks the soil was black, the
trees were leaf bearing. In the spring and autumn the area was a sea of
mud, in the winter a world of snow and ice; in the summer it was
covered with a haze of dust. All about, in hundreds of towns and
villages, Jews lived, as they had lived for many generations, scattered
islands in a gentile ocean; and among them my own people, on my
father's and mother's side, made up a not inconsiderable proportion.

Just outside Motol the river flowed into a large lake and emerged
again at the other end on its way to join the Pina; that in turn was a
tributary of the Pripet, itself a tributary of the Dnieper, which fell into
the Black Sea many hundreds of miles away. On the further banks of
the lake were some villages, mysterious to my childhood by virtue of
their general name — ''the Beyond-the-River." For them Motol (or
Motelle, as we affectionately Yiddishized the name) was a sort of
metropolis.

A very tiny and isolated metropolis it was, with some four or five
hundred families of White Russians and less than two hundred Jewish
families. Communication with the outside world was precarious and
intermittent. No railway, no metaled road, passed within twenty miles
of us. There was no post office. Mail was brought in by anyone from the
townlet who happened to pass by the nearest railway station on his own

3

4

TRIAL AND ERROR

business. Sometimes these chance messengers would hold on to the mail
for days, or for weeks, distributing it when the spirit moved them. But
letters played no very important part in our lives ; there were few in the
outside world who had reason to communicate with us.

There were streets of a kind in Motol — ^unpaved, of course — and two
or three of them were Jewish, for even in the open spaces we drew
together, for comfort, for safety, and for companionship. All the build-
ings were of wood, with two exceptions : the brick house of the ‘Richest
Jew in town,^' and the church. There were naturally frequent fires, the
immemorial scourge of Russian villages ; but since wood was plentiful,
and stone prohibitively expensive, there was nothing to be done about it.
Our synagogues, too, were of wood, both of them, the ''Old Synagogue''
and the "New Synagogue." How old the first was, and how new the
second, I cannot tell ; but this I do remember : the Old Synagogue was
for the "better" class, the New for the poor. Members of the Old Syna-
gogue seldom went to the New S5niagogue ; it was beneath their dignity.
But occasionally my father (we belonged to the Old Synagogue) went
there by special request. For among other gifts my father had that of a
fine voice, and was an amateur Chazan, or prayer leader, much esteemed
and sought after in Motol. On the Day of Atonement he would conduct
perhaps half of the services — ^to the edification of his townsmen and the
awe and delight of his children — and sometimes he was invited to per-
form this office in the New Synagogue, and would graciously accept.

Motol was situated in one of the darkest and most forlorn corners of
the Pale of Settlement, that prison house created by czarist Russia for
the largest part of its Jewish population. Throughout the centuries alter-
nations of bitter oppression and comparative freedom — how comparative
a free people would hardly understand — ^had deepened the consciousness
of exile in these scattered communities, which were held together by a
common destiny and common dreams. Motol was typical Pale, typical
countryside. Here, in this half-townlet, half-village, I lived from the
time of my birth, in 1874, till the age of eleven ; and here I wove my first
pictures of the Jewish and gentile worlds.

The life of the Jewish child in a Russian townlet of those times has
been described over and over again in Jewish literature, and is not un-
familiar to the general reader. Like all Jewish boys I went to cheder,
beginning at the age of four. Like nearly all cheders, mine was a squalid,
one-room school, which also constituted the sole quarters of the teacher's
family. If my cheder differed from others, it was perhaps in the posses-
sion of a family goat which took shelter with us in cold weather. And if
my first Rebb% or teacher, differed from others, it was in the degree of
Ms pedagogic incompetence. If our schoolroom was usually hung up
with washing, if the teacher's numerous children rolled about on the
floor, if the din was deafening and incessant, that was nothing out of the

EARLIEST DAYS

5

ordinary. Nor was it anything out of the ordinary that neither the
tumult nor the overcrowding affected our peace of mind or our powers
of concentration.

In the spring and autumn, when the cheder was a tiny island set in a
sea of mud, and in the winter, when it was almost blotted out by snow,
I had to be carried there by a servant, or by my older brother. Once
there, I stayed immured within its walls, along with the other children,
from early morning till evening. We took lunch with us and consumed
it in a short pause in the proceedings, often with the books still opened
in front of us. On dark winter afternoons our studies could only be
pursued by artificial light, and as candles were something of a luxury,
and oil lamps practically unobtainable, each pupil was in turn assessed
a pound of candles as a contribution to the education of the young
generation.

In the course of my cheder years I had several teachers, and by the
time I was eleven, or even before, considerable demands were made on
my intellectual powers. I was expected to understand — I never did,
properly — ^the intricacies of the law as laid down in the Babylonian
Talmud and as expounded and knocked into me by a Rehhi who was
both ferocious and exacting, and certainly far from lucid in his exposi-
tions, He was always at a loss to understand why things needed to be
explained at all; he felt that every Jewish boy should be able to pick up
such things, which were as easy as they were sacred, by natural instinct,
or at least just by glancing down the pages. I did not share his view,
but was too badly terrorized to join issue with him as to his methods —
if, indeed, I was at all aware of their inadequacy.

I did not relish the Talmudic teaching, but I adored that of the
Prophets, for which I attended another cheder. There the teacher was
humane and kindly, with a real enthusiasm for his subject. This en-
thusiasm he managed to communicate to his pupils, though here, too,
school and surroundings were of the most depressing character. It is to
this teacher, who became a lifelong friend of mine, that I am primarily
indebted for my knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, and for my early and
lasting devotion to Hebrew literature. He died in Poland not many
years ago, and I was in correspondence with him till the end.

He was a man of the ''enlightened'’ type; that is, he had been touched
by the spirit of the modernizing Haskallah (or Enlightenment) which
was then abroad in the larger centers of Russian Jewry. Very sur-
reptitiously he managed to smuggle into intervals in our sacred studies
some attempts at instruction in secular knowledge. Thus, I remember
how he brought into class, furtively and gleefully, a Hebrew textbook
on natural science and chemistry, the first book of its kind to come into
those parts. How this treasure fell into his hands I do not know, but
without ever having seen a chemical laboratory, and with the complete

6

TRIAL AND ERROR

ignorance of natural science which was characteristic of the Russian
ghetto Jew, unable therefore to understand one scientific paragraph of
the book, he gloated over it and displayed it to his favorite pupils. He
would even lend it to one or another of us to read in the evenings. And
sometimes — a proceeding not without risk, for discovery would have
entailed immediate dismissal from his post — ^he would have us read with
him some pages which seemed to him to be of special interest. We read
aloud, of course, and in the Talmudic chant hallowed by tradition, so
that anyone passing by the school would never suspect but what we were
engaged in the sacred pursuits proper to a Hebrew school.

I have said that Motol lay in one of the darkest and most forlorn
corners of the Pale of Settlement. This was true in the economic as well
as in the spiritual sense. It is difficult to convey to the modern Westerner
any idea of the sort of life which most of the Jewish families of Motol
led, of their peculiar occupations, their fantastic poverty, their shifts
and privations. On the spiritual side they were almost as isolated as on
the physical. Newspapers were almost unknown in Motol. Very occa-
sionally we secured a Hebrew paper from Warsaw, and then it would
be a month or five weeks old. To us, of course, the news would be fresh.
To tell the truth, we were not much interested in what was taking place
in the world outside. It did not concern us particularly. If we were
interested at all it was in the Hebrew presentation of the news. There
were, from time to time, articles of general interest. No family in Motol
could afford to subscribe to a newspaper regularly — nor would it have
been delivered regularly. As it was, one copy would make the rounds of
the "Vell-to-do'^ families. When at last it reached the children it was in
shreds, and mostly illegible.

And yet Motol had two peculiar advantages, both deriving from its
natural situation and its chief occupation, the timber trade. There was,
in the Jewish population, a small layer which was more traveled than
you would expect ; and to some extent the effects of the general poverty
were mitigated by the contact with nature.

My family was among the well-to-do, and it may help give some idea
of the standards of well-being which prevailed in Motol when I say that
our yearly budget was probably seldom more than five or six hundred
rubles (two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars) in all. Even
this income fluctuated widely, so that it could never be counted on with
any degree of certainty. Out of it there were a dozen children to be
clothed, shod and fed, and given a tolerably good education, considering
our circumstances. On the other hand, we had our own house — one
story, with seven rooms and a kitchen — some acres of land, chickens,
two cows, a vegetable garden, a few fruit trees. So we had a supply of
milk, and sometimes butter ; we had fruit and vegetables in season ; we
had enough bread — ^which my mother baked herself; we had fish, aiid

, EARLIEST DAYS

7

we had meat once a week — on the Sabbath. And there was always plenty
of fresh air. In these respects we were a great deal better off than the
Jews of the city ghettos.

’ Our house stood adjacent to that of my grandfather, who occupied
all by himself what seemed to me then to be a mansion. I was greatly
attached to grandpa, who was a good-natured, modest, simple soul, and
at the age of five or six I went to live with him. I remember vividly
those days — especially the winter mornings. Grandpa used to get up
early, while it was still pitch dark, but the house was always beautifully
warm, however severe the frost outside. First of all we said the long
morning prayers ; then came breakfast. At table grandpa used to tell me
stories of the deeds of great Rabbis and of other mighty figures in Israel.
I was particularly impressed by the visit of Sir Moses Montefiore to
Russia — one of his innumerable journeys on behalf of his people; That
particular visit had taken place only a generation or so before my birth,
but the story was already a legend. Indeed Sir Moses Montefiore was
himself, though then still living, already a legend. He was to live on till
1885, to the fabulous age of one hundred and one years. On the occasion
of which my grandfather used to tell me. Sir Moses came to Vilna, one
of the oldest and most illustrious Jewish settlements in Russia, and the
Jews of that community came out to welcome him. Grandpa told me how
the Jews unharnessed the horses and dragged the carriage of Sir Moses
Montefiore in solemn procession through the streets. It was a wonderful
story, which I heard over and over again.

Grandpa died in 1882, when I was eight years old. I remember my
grief, which I hardly understood myself. When they asked me why I
was crying, I answered, “Grandpa hurts meT

The timber trade, the mainstay of Motol, played so large a part in
our life, and is so closely bound up with my childhood and boyhood
memories, that I must give it more than passing mention. *To call even
the more prosperous Jews of Motol real timber merchants would be
somewhat of an exaggeration. They were at best subcontractors. But
their connection with the basic trade of Motol did not give them any
sense of security, for, as we shall see, it was hazardous and precarious
in the extreme, and though it provided an all-year-round occupation, it
was often far from providing an all-year-round income.

My father was a “transportierer.” He cut and hauled the timber and
got it floated down to Danzig. It was a complicated and heartbreaking
occupation. The forests stood on marshland, and except in times of
drought and frost it was impossible to do any hauling. In the rainy
seasons of spring and autumn the rivers overflowed, for there were no
dykes and no attempt whatsoever at regulation. The rain came down
and stayed there, till the summer dried it or the winter froze it. But
sometimes it happened that between the rainfall and the dead of winter

8

TRIAL AND ERROR

there intervened a heavy snowfall, which blanketed the soggy earth
so that the frost could not penetrate. Unless a quick thaw intervened,
and gave the following frost a chance to do its work, the forests and
marshes remained impassable, and the season was ruined.

The cycle of work would begin in November, after the festival of
Sukkoth, or Tabernacles. My father would set out for the heart of the
forest, twenty or twenty-five miles away. His only communication with
home was the sleigh road, which was always subject to interruption.
He took along a supply of food and of warm clothing, and several bags
of copper coins with which to pay the workers. We were never easy
during father’s absences in the forest, even during later years when my
older brother Feivel went along with him; for there were wolves in
the forests and occasionally robbers. Fortunately there was, between
my father and the fifty or sixty men he employed seasonally — ^moujiks
of Motol and the neighborhood — ^an excellent relationship, primitive,
but warm and patriarchal. Once or twice he was attacked by robbers,
but they were beaten off by his workmen.

It was hard, exacting work, but on the whole my father did not dislike
it, perhaps because it called for a considerable degree of skill. It was his
business to mark out the trees to be felled and he had to be able to tell
which were healthy and worth felling. He had to supervise the hauling.
The logs were roped and piled on the edge of the little river, to wait
there for the thaw and the spring flood, which usually came between
the festivals of Purim and Passover.

If the winter lingered we did not have father home for the Passover,
for he could not leave to anyone else the responsible task of setting the
timber afloat. When this happened it was a calamity which darkened the
entire festival for us. But on the whole the thaw came in time, the
streamlet broke up and flooded, and father would return on the last
sleigh. He came home haggard, exhausted, and underfed ; but it was an
indescribably joyous home-coming. He brought the festival with him,
as it were, and both would be with us for eight days.

After the Passover began the spring and summer "work, the floating
of the rafts to the sea. This too was a skilled and exacting occupation —
really a branch of navigation. The rafts had to be fairly small to be able
to negotiate the first streamlets ; but they had to hold together strongly,
against exceptional flood. The first job was to get them on the Pina and
down to Pinsk, which they usually reached at Shevuoth, or Pentecost,
seven weeks after Passover. There, instead of floating onward with the
stream in a general southerly direction, which would have brought
them to the Dnieper and the far-off Black Sea, the rafts were maneu-
vered in the opposite direction through a canal which connected the
Pina with Brest Litovsk on the Boug, the main tributary of the Vistula,
which empties into the Baltic Sea at the port of Danzig.

EARLIEST DAYS

9

Now Brest Litovsk was on the edge of the marshes, and from there
on the Bong ran through sandy soil. The country became undulating,
and less monotonous. But as the river was never looked after, never
dyked or dredged, it formed sandbanks, especially in the summer. If
the rafts consisted of oak, or were unskillfully piled up, and drew too
much water, they often stuck fast. Then there was nothing to do but
wait, and bake in the sun, and pray for rain, or for a fresh flow from
the headwaters of the Boug in the Carpathians. Meanwhile, days, per-
haps weeks, would pass, and you watched your slender profits being
eaten up by the delay ; for though you included this hazard in the price,
you could not make it high enough to cover every contingency.

Sometimes scores of rafts, floating easily, would be held up by one
or two heavier rafts which were sanded. To get round them was a
ticklish job, and you usually had to bribe the officials — ^the river police
— ^to be allowed to do it. When at last you floated onto the wide Vistula
you were faced with troubles of another kind. The rains and freshets
which you welcomed on the Boug were often a bane on the Vistula.
The waters became swollen and turbulent, and the rafts might be tom
to pieces. Then you would tie up to the shore, and watch the flood, and
wait for it to subside. At Thorn, which was German, everything changed.
The river was regulated, order prevailed. From Thom to Danzig it was
a peaceful journey.

This description of river navigation is from my personal recollections,
for when I was a schoolboy in Pinsk I used to spend much of my sum-
mers on the rafts. I had an uncle who was a great expert in this branch
of the trade, and he would often take me along on one of the journeys,
which sometimes lasted for weeks. He used to have a very comfortable
cabin, with bedroom and kitchen, on one of the rafts. He even had, as
I remember, a mosquito net — an unheard-of innovation, though the air
was sometimes black with insects. Those were jolly times for me. I did
not go as far as Danzig, but got off on the nearer side of Warsaw, and
took the train home.

The floating of the rafts lasted roughly from the Passover until the
beginning of the great Jewish autumn festivals. Father would generally
be back from Danzig for Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and the Day
of Atonement. Then, when Tabernacles was past, and the heartache of
collecting payments was over — ^and sometimes it wasn’t — ^the annual
cycle would begin again.

The friendly relations between my father and his workers were not
unusual as between the individual Jew and individual gentile. In our
particular corner of the world we lived on tolerable terms with our
neighbors. They were a mild, kindly, hard-working lot They had a fair
quantity of land, they were not starved; some of them were even
prosperous. They had— dike the Jews— large families, and were always

lO

TRIAL AND ERROR

on the lookout for auxiliary occupations, one of which was the timber
trade. From each peasant hut one of the men would hire himself out in
the winter for the felling, and in the summer for the logging.

The language of the peasants in our part was an obscure dialect of
Russian. Unlike the Ukrainian, it had no literature, and was not even
written. Education was primitive in the extreme. There was, in every
townlet of the size of Motol, a government school, but attendance was
not compulsory. Some of the peasants sent some of their children to
school, irregularly; most of them grew up quite illiterate. By contrast
the Jews, who did not make use of the government schools, and who
had only the cheders, had a high degree of literacy. It is hard to remem-
ber a Jewish father whose sons, at least, did not attend a cheder. But
there the education was entirely Hebrew and Yiddish. Those that
wanted to give their children the beginnings of a Russian and modern
education engaged a special teacher, usually of third-rate ability. I
myself knew hardly a word of Russian till I was eleven years old.

Though personal contacts might generally be friendly, the economic
structure of this part of the country, and the history of its growth did
not encourage good relations between Jews and peasants. There were
many great estates, usually owned by Poles. The Polish landowners
had about them numbers of Jews, who acted as their factors, bought
their timber, rented some of the land or leased the lakes for fishing.
The Poles constituted a Junker class, though in my time their wings
were already being clipped by the Russians. Inherently they were hostile
to the Jews, but under the common czarist oppression they assumed a
kindlier attitude. The peasants, however, had no point of direct contact
with the landed gentry; the Jews stood between the two classes. The
Jews were therefore the only visible instrument of the exploiting no-
bility. Still, the exploitation did not produce the same disastrous effects
as elsewhere, for this was a landed peasantry. I do not remember, in
our district, any period of starvation such as we heard of from the
Volga. With a piece of land, a few pigs, chickens and cows, and employ-
ment on the side, the peasants could manage well enough, if they did
not drink excessively. Except during the Christmas and Easter festivals,
when they were roused to a high pitch of religious excitement by their
priests, they were quite friendly toward us. At worst they never got
wholly out of hand, and there were never any pogroms in Motol or the
neighboring villages. It is a melancholy reflection on human relation-
ships when the absence of murder must be noted as a special circum-
stance which calls for gratitude.

The differences between the peasants and the Jews must not be
minimized, for even in that townlet we lived mainly apart. And much
more striking than the physical separation was the spiritual. We were
strangers to each other’s ways of thought, to each other’s dreams,
religions, festivals, and even languages.

EARLIEST DAYS

11

There were times when the non-Jewish world was practically ex-
cluded from our consciousness, as on the Sabbath and, still more, on the
spring and autumn festivals, which were really great occasions for us.
I do not know to whom they meant more, to the grownups or the
children. For them the festival represented a surcease frorn the turmoil
of the working days, from their worries and depression. For us, it was
freedom from the cheder, new clothes, games. For both there was a
striking contrast with everyday life; there was an atmosphere of peace
in our part of the village, and to usher in the sacred days the house
itself was made to assume a solemn and festive appearance. Meals were
more regular, more ceremonial; the family was united. Even the long
hours of attendance at the synagogue — ^generally a bore on Sabbaths
and weekdays — ^had their attraction, especially for the members of our
family, for on such occasions father might be called up to chant the
prayers. Then people would come over from the other synagogue to
listen, and the atmosphere became stifling; we youngsters watched and
listened, and were filled with pride and happiness.

We were separated from the peasants by a whole inner universe of
memories and experiences. In my early childhood Zionist ideas and
aspirations were already awake in Russian Jewry. My father was not
yet a Zionist, but the house was steeped in rich Jewish tradition, and
Palestine was at the center of the ritual, a longing for it implicit in
our life. Practical nationalism did not assume form till some years later,
but the ^‘Return’^ was in the air, a vague, deep-rooted Messianism, a
hope which would not die. We heard the conversations of our elders,
and we were caught up in the restlessness. But it was not for children ;
when one of us ventured a remark on the subject he was put down
rather roughly. In particular I remember one Rebbi, himself an ardent
nationalist, who thought it impious and presumptuous of a youngster
to so much as mention the rebuilding of Palestine. He would say: "‘You
keep quiet. You'll never bring the Messiah any nearer. One has to do
much, learn much, know much and suffer much before one is worthy
of that.'' He intimidated us so completely that we learned to keep our
own counsel. Still, the dream was there, an ever-present background
to our thoughts. And the Rebbi's words, uttered so brusquely, have
remained permanently in my mind.

As children we were left pretty much to ourselves, since father was
away most of the time. Mother was of course the center of the house-
hold, but in those years — and indeed, for a long time after — she was
always either pregnant, or nursing an infant, so that she had little
strength left for her growing brood. She bore my father fifteen children,
of which three died in infancy, and twelve grew into full man- and
womanhood. She did not think childbearing a burden. She wanted as
many children as possible, and she went on having them happily and
uninterruptedly from her seventeenth year until her forty-sixth. She

TRIAL AND ERROR

was already a grandmother when my youngest brother was born, and
two of my oldest sister’s children rejoiced in the birth of an uncle, I
remember that mother’s constant childbearing was accepted in such a
matter-of-fact way that when I was a schoolboy in Pinsk, and away
from home, I saved up, kopeck by kopeck, enough to buy a new cradle,
the old one having become very rickety; and I remember lugging it
home on one of my visits, and proudly presenting it to mother for her
^‘next”

We were luckier than most of our fellow- Jews in being able to afford
'^servants,” if that is the real name for them. The first I remember was
a combination charwoman, maid-of-all-work, adviser, family retainer —
and family tyrant. She bossed all the children, and occasionally mother,
too. She was a fixture in our lives, and could no more have been dis-
missed than a member of the family. The second, who outlived the first,
and was with us for something like thirty-five years, was a lovable
peasant by the name of Yakim, who became as much a natural part of
our world as the first. He was still with us when I left home for the
West; and when I used to return, he would plead with me to let him
come along and attend to my needs. He was very proud of my academic
achievements, and even more of my Zionist activities. He had learned
to sing, after a fashion, the Jewish national anthem, Hatikvah; and in
moments of enthusiasm he would cry out: ^'Come, little ones, let us
sing TikvahV

It is perhaps an exaggeration to say that we were often left to our-
selves. In father’s absences, the Rehbi stood in loco parentis. And then
there were uncles and aunts without number, in Moto, in Pinsk, and
in near-by villages. They took an active, loving and contentious interest
in our welfare and our education, more especially in our religious educa-
tion, which they frequently found deficient in the right degree of
orthodoxy. One uncle in particular, Itchie Moshe, who was himself
childless, was forever admonishing us on our ungodliness. But as against
him my uncle Jacob was the ""heretic” of the family. My father, I might
mention, seldom preached at us.

Mother began to play a greater role in our lives after we had settled
in Pinsk, and I was home only on occasion. She had passed beyond her
childbearing years and she had a second blossoming of vitality. By then
the house had become something like a public institution. The older
children were at the Gymnasium or at the university, the younger at the
local school. During the vacations it was a pandemonium. Fellow-stu-
dents were in and out at all hours ; and they represented every shade of
opinion in a student world given perhaps excessively to opinions and to
loud exposition of them ; there were Zionists, assimilationists, Socialists,
anarchists, every variety of revolutionary. The discussions were inter-
minable; and feelings often ran high, even between members of the

EARLIEST DAYS 13

family. There were times when brothers and sisters were not on speak-
ing terms for months at a stretch. Amid this riot and dash of views
mother moved imperturbably, ministering to all, whatever their shade
of opinion. Most of the time she was in the kitchen. 'TheyVe got to be
fed,'’ she would say, ‘'or they won’t have the strength to shout.” Herself
orthodox — she said her prayers every day, and went to the synagogue
every Sabbath — she was extraordinarily tolerant with regard to others.
We children did not dream of imitating her piety; but there was no
friction on this score, and none even on the score of the genuine danger
which we created by our gatherings and by the harboring of illegal
literature. Herself alien to our views, mother co-operated loyally. She
would bury our revolutionary pamphlets in the garden, and when a
police raid took place — ^which happened more than once — she would
confront the officers of the law with such dignity, and with such an air
of innocence — ^which, for that matter, was not assumed — ^that she in-
variably disarmed the intruders.

It was a queer house over which her hospitable spirit presided. The
bookcases contained probably as strange an assortment of literature as
was ever assembled in a private home; the Talmud and the works of
Maimonides cheek by jowl with Gorki and Tolstoi; textbooks on chem-
istry, dentistry, engineering and medicine jostling the modem Hebrew
romances of Mapu and the nationalist periodicals of the new Zionism.
On the walls were pictures of Maimonides and Baron de Hirsch, of the
Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and of Anton Chekhov. The disputes were
carried on in three languages, Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, and what
they lacked in formality or logic they definitely made up in vehemence.

My mother was not a good housekeeper. It is very possible that she
could have become one if the task, under those circumstances, had not
been utterly hopeless. But she was wonderfully good — ^the kind of per-
son to whom neighbors turn naturally in time of trouble. The earlier
years of her marriage were hard on her; but from 1900 to 1912 — ^the
year of my father’s death — she did know a certain amount of ease and
comfort. Father then had an interest in the business of his first son-in-
law, Lubin, who was a successful timber merchant on a large scale;
that enabled my mother to go to Carlsbad and Kissingen for the sum-
mers. But even in the difficult days she was cheerful and optimistic.
She would say : “Whatever happens, I shall be well off. If Shemuel [the
revolutionary son] is right, we shall all be happy in Russia; and if
Chaim [myself] is right, then I shall go to live in Palestine.” I will not
undertake to say who was right, but she spent her last years very happily
in Palestine — ^along with most of her family. But that was long after.
She was still in Pinsk when, two years after father’s death, the First
World War came, and with it the German invasion. From Pinsk mother
fled to Warsaw, from Warsaw to Moscow. Already in her sixties, she

14 TRIAL AND ERROR

passed through the storm of the Revolution and the civil war. In 1921
I was able to get her and my brother Feivel out of Moscow and send
them to Palestine. I built a house for my mother on the Hadar Ha-
Carmel in Haifa, and there she lived until the day of her death, which
occurred in 1939, in her eighty-seventh year. Till the end she was alert
and in good spirits. She still said her prayers daily — reading without
glasses — and she took an active interest in an old-people’s home. I
think that the moment of her greatest pride was when she sat with me
and my wife on Mount Scopus on the day of the opening of the Hebrew
University, April i, 1925.

When I recall how seldom father was with us, and how preoccupied
he was with the problem of a livelihood and yet how large an influence
he was in our lives, I am filled with genuine wonder. He was a silent
man, a scholarly spirit lost in the world of business, and fired with deep
ambitions for his children. He did not believe in words of admonish-
ment, and even less in punishment. When he did say something, it
carried great weight with us. He was an aristocrat, an intellectual and
something of a leader, too — the only Jew ever chosen to be the starosta,
or head man, of the townlet of Moto. We loved him, and tried to
emulate his example. When he was home, and had a few minutes free
from the cares and worries of his daily life — and how few those minutes
were ! — ^lie usually read. His favorite books were the works of Maimo-
nides, and especially the Guide for the Perplexed. The Shulchm Aruch,
or Code oj Caro, he knew by heart. On Sabbaths he would sometimes
call over the older children, and speak to them a little on the subject
matter of. his reading. He did it in the most casual way, so as not to
give the impression that there was any obligation on our part to listen
to him; this is probably why we all enjoyed these rare conversations,
and regarded it as a privilege to take part in them.

Not particularly robust, he followed as long as he could a hard and
dangerous occupation. He worried overmuch for the future of his chil-
dren. A Jew of the lower middle class, he aspired to give them the
best education. There were twelve of us ultimately, and with his and
each other’s help nine of us went through universities — an unheard-of
achievement in those days. He belonged to the type familiar to old
Russian Jewry as the Maskil, the enlightened and modernized Hebraist;
and he took his part, as we shall see, in the Zionist movement.

Father’s standing in the village of Motol and, later, in the town of
Pinsk, was very high ; never by virtue of his economic position, which
even by the standards of Motol was only fair, but because of his charac-
ter and his scholarship. Motol, like all little communities, was always
filled with quarrels and intrigues, especially around the offices of Rabbi
and ritual slaughterer and synagogue cantor. There were occasional
scandals and on one or two occasions near-riots in the synagogue. There

EARLIEST DAYS 15

lingers in my memory one vivid picture of confusion, noise, hostility and
raised fists, and father mounting the pulpit, striking the lectern, and
lifting up his voice in a rare outburst of anger: ''Silence!’' I do not
know what the occasion was. I do not know who had insulted whom,
who was trying to push whom out of public office, or who had dared to
break in on the reading of the Torah. I only remember the strange
effect of that voice. It was as though a shot had been fired.

Father refused to take sides in public or private quarrels. If a man
insisted on telling him his side of the story he would listen patiently to
the end and say: "From what you tell me, I can see that you are entirely
in the wrong. Now I shall have to hear the other side; perhaps you are
in the right after alL'’^ This sort of reception did not encourage litigants
to come to him. Perhaps it was the undignified scenes he had witnessed
in the synagogue which imbued my father with his lifelong hatred of
clericalism, and of the exploitation of religion for a livelihood.

But he was, I need hardly say, a deeply religious man, respectful of
the tradition and of scholarship. He had an older brother, uncle Moshe,
who was Rabbi of Lomzhe — a famous and distinguished position in
Israel — and to whom he was greatly attached. I remember how, on a
certain holiday, when I had come home from Pinsk, father entered the
house in festive clothes, ready to sit down to the holiday meal, when
a telegram was brought to the door. A telegram in Motol invariably
meant calamity; for except in desperate circumstances no one would
think of sending one to the village, where it had to be delivered from the
nearest railroad station, twenty miles away, by special messenger. And
this telegram was no exception. It brought the news of the death of my
uncle Moshe. My father gave no expression to his sorrow. But from
that day on he never again led the prayers in the synagogue. He had
completely lost his singing voice. I have noticed that I have inherited
from father this curious and special vulnerability of the vocal chords.

He had a difficult life, and did not relax until his later years; but
then he was too worn out to recuperate. He died at the age of sixty,
which is young in our family. He left a number of Hebrew manuscripts,
which I intended to look over, with a view to publishing some of them.
But in her wanderings during the First World War my mother lost
them.

I remember him best out of my childhood as he stood before the
Ark in the synagogue, leading the congregation in prayer. Many of the
tunes have remained with me till this day, and they usually spring up
in my mind when I am sad or solitary ; and sometimes, on particularly
solemn occasions, a few familiar bars of a synagogue melody will con-
jure up in my memory far off pictures which I thought had faded from
it forever.

CHAPTER 2t

Schooldays In Pinsk

I Leave Home — The Russian ^^May Laws^' oj 1882 — Pogroms^
Zionism, and the Jewish Democratic Awakening — The Stam-
pede to America — Educational Restrictions — My Brother
Feivel — I Become Selj-S up porting — Russian Teachers — One
Brilliant Exception — The Pinsk Community — My First Steps
in Zionism — Pinsk in Zionist History — Primitive Practical
Beginnings — Class Divisions on Zionism — Hebrew Renais-
sance — The Assimilationist Intelligentsia — Zionist Record of
the Weizmann Family.

T*HE first fundamental change in my life took place when, at the age
of eleven, I left the townlet of my birth and went out ''into the
world’ ^ — ^that is, to Pinsk — ^to enter a Russian school : which was some-
thing not done until that time by any Motolite. From Motol to Pinsk
was a matter of six Russian miles, or twenty-five English miles; but
in terms of intellectual displacement the distance was astronomical. For
Pinsk was a real provincial metropolis, with thirty thousand inhabitants,
of whom the great majority were Jews. Pinsk had a name and a tradition
as "a city and mother in Israel.’’ It could not pretend to the cultural
standing of great centers like Warsaw, Vilna, Odessa and Moscow; but
neither was it a nameless village. The new Chibath Zion (Love of Zion)
movement, the forerunner of modern Zionism, had taken deep root in
Pinsk. There were Jewish scholars and Jewish public leaders in Pinsk.
There was a high school — ^the one I was going to attend — ^there were
libraries, hospitals, factories and paved streets.

The years of my childhood in Motol and of my schooling in Pinsk
’coincided with the onset of the "dark years” for Russian Jewry; or
perhaps I should say with their return. The reign of Alexander II had
been a false dawn. For a generation the ancient Russian policy of repres-
sion of the Jews had been mitigated by the liberalism of the monarch
who had set the serfs free; and therefore many Jews believed that the
walls of the ghetto were about to fall. Jews were beginning to attend
Russia.n schools and universities, and to enter into the life of the country.
Then, in 1881, came the assassination of Alexander, and on its heels the

16

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

17

tide of reaction, which was not to ebb again until the overthrow of the
Romanovs thirty-six years later. The new repression began with the
famous ‘Temporary Legislation Affecting the Jews’" enacted in 1882,
and known as the May Laws. Nothing in czarist Russia was as endur-
ing as ‘Temporary Legislation.” This particular set of enactments, at
any rate, was prolonged and broadened and extended until it came to
cover every aspect of Jewish life; and as one read, year after year, the
complicated ukases which poured from St. Petersburg, one obtained the
impression that the whole cumbersome machinery of the vast Russian
Empire was created for the sole purpose of inventing and amplifying
rules and regulations for the hedging in of the existence of its Jewish
subjects until it became something that was neither life nor death.

Parallel with these repressions, and with the general setback to Rus-
sian liberalism, there was a deep stirring of the masses, Russian and
Jewish. Among the Jews this first folk awakening had two facets, the
revolutionary, mingling with the general Russian revolt, andT the Zionist
nationalist. The latter, however, was also revolutionary and democratic.
The Jewish masses were rising against the paternalism of their “nota-
bles,” their shtadlonim, the men of wealth and influence who had always
taken it on themselves to represent the needs of the Jews vis-a-vis
governmental authority. Theirs was, even in the best cases, a class view,
characterized by a natural fear of disturbing the status quo or imperiling
such privileges as they enjoyed by virtue of their economic standing. In
the depths of the masses an impulse awoke, vague, groping, unformu-
lated, for Jewish self-liberation. It was genuinely of the folk; it was
saturated with Jewish tradition; and it was connected with the most
ancient memories of the land where Jewish life had first expressed itsdf
in freedom. It was, in short, the birth of modern Zionism.

By 1886, when I entered high school in Pinsk, the atmosphere of
Jewish life was heavy with disaster. There had been the ghastly pogroms
of 1881. These had not reached us in Motol, but they had shaken the
whole Jewish world to its foundations. I was a child, and I had lived
in the separateness of the Jewish life of our townlet. Non- Jews were
for me something peripheral. But even I did not escape a consciousness
of the general gloom. Almost as far as my memory goes back, I can
remember the stampede — ^the frantic rush from the Russian prison
house, the tremendous tide of migration which carried hundreds of
thousands of Jews from their ancient homes to far-off lands across the
seas. I was a witness in boyhood and early manhood of the emptying
of whole villages and towns. My own family was once caught up in the
fever — ^this was about the time of the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 — ^and
though we finally decided against flight, there were cousins and uncles
and more distant relatives by the score who took the westward path.
Many years later, in 1921, when I first visited America as the President

TRIAL AND ERROR

of the World Zionist Organization, and a mass reception was held for
me in the Manhattan Opera House in New York, there were two entire
sections of a balcony with a big streamer across them: Relatives of
Dr. Weizmann. I have the impression that some of these relatives
were very distant indeed; but I can record that in Chicago there was
until recently — ^and perhaps there still is — a. Motol synagogue; and I
met in Chicago the old keeper of the baths, the old prayer leader, and
other worthies I had known in childhood; I met their children, too, the
Americanized generation which still remembered its origins dimly. In a
sense, my childhood was passed in a world which was breaking up under
the impact of renewed persecution. We did not have to live in the midst
of pogroms to experience their social effects, or to know that the gentile
world was poisoned. I knew little of gentiles, but they became to me,
from very early on, the symbols of the menacing forces against which I
should have to butt with all my young strength in order to make my
way in life. The acquisition of knowledge was not for us so much a
normal process of education as the storing up of weapons in an arsenal
by means of which we hoped later to be able to hold our own in a
hostile world.

I happened to belong to a ‘lucky'' transitional generation. A few years
after I entered the Real-Gymnasium of Pinsk came the decree which
limited the number of Jewish students in any Russian high school to
10 per cent of the gentile student body. Since the Jewish people con-
stituted only 4 per cent of the Russian population this might not seem,
at first sight, a very unreasonable arrangement. But there was a catch ;
there always was in czarist legislation. The Jewish population was
concentrated in, and legally confined to, the Jewish Pale of Settlement,
which was only a very small fraction of the Russian Empire. Even within
the limits of the Pale, the Jews were confined to urban areas, and were
excluded from the country districts, so that within the Pale the Jewish
inhabitants of the towns — i.e., the only places with schools — ^varied from
30 to 80 per cent of the total. Moreover, the non-Jewish population had
not the same overwhelming thirst for knowledge as the Jews, who were
always knocking at the doors of the schools. The result was that at the
school entrance examinations, comparatively few non-Jewish candidates
presented themselves, and it was 10 per cent of this small number that
was allotted to the Jews. It meant that in a Jewish population numbering
perhaps tens of thousands, only four or five or six Jewish students would
be admitted. Young children had to wait their turn for years, and this
long, heartbreaking wait often ended in disappointment. The teachers
and governing authorities of the schools within the Pale were typical
Russian officials, and as such, not free from corruption. So the rich Jew
would use his gold to pave the way for his boy to enter the school, while
the poor boy, in spite of marked ability and brilliant success in the

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

19

examinations, had to forego the advantages which an education might
have afforded him. This state of affairs produced very curious, tragi-
comic results. There were occasions when a rich Jew would hire ten
non- Jewish candidates (at times rather oddly selected) to sit for the
entrance examination at the local school, and thus make room for one
Jewish pupil — needless to say, his own son or a prot^e.

Matters were infinitely more difficult at the universities, where the
numerus claiisus was 3 or 4 per cent. From certain higher institutions
of learning Jews were excluded altogether.

I did not go to Pinsk alone. My brother, Feivel, — older than I by three
years — ^went along with me, and we lodged together with some friends
of the family. Feivel had not done so well at cheder. The Rebbi in Motol
and my parents had come to the conclusion, wholly unwarranted I think,
that he was not intellectual enough for a higher education, and it was
decided to teach him a trade — ^he was the only one among us youngsters
who learned a trade. He was clever with his hands, and an exceptionally
good draftsman. He would as a matter of fact have made a good engineer.
He was, however, apprenticed to a lithographer, to learn engraving, and
did very well at it. But when he had been three years in Pinsk, he
interrupted his apprenticeship, and went back to Motol to help my
father in the timber trade, thus interrupting his apprenticeship for
several years. I imagine that this period was a bad one for the timber
trade, or at least for my father’s business ; for just about then I made a
special effort to become self-supporting, while continuing my studies at
the Real-Gymnasium.

I had been aware from the beginning, that is, from my twelfth year on,
that my schooling in Pinsk presented a serious economic problem to my
parents. Board and lodgings probably did not come to more than two
rubles — one dollar — a week ; but that is a considerable proportion of an
average weekly income of twelve rubles. And there was my brother,
who was with me for the first three years. On top of board and lodging
there was the question of clothes, not to mention school fees and books.
In a town the requirements were higher than those of the simple village
life of Motol. There was also the matter of prestige. In Pinsk I would
come into contact with different classes and conditions of people, and
my parents felt that their child must not lose caste. All in all, then, this
was a great strain on the limited family resources. I knew that when I
was eleven years old, and both Feivel and I had to be supported in
Pinsk. I felt it more deeply when Feivel had to return home and I was
left alone in Pinsk. I had tried even earlier to find a source of income
to replace, at least in part, the maintenance allowance from my parents ;
I had not succeeded. But just when I was left alone, I was received as
a kind of tutor into the household of a rich family. My task was to
supervise the homework of the son, who was three forms below me in

20

TRIAL AND ERROR

school. For this I received my board and lodging, and fifty rubles a
year. The cash payment covered my fees, books and minor expenses,
and from that time on I was no longer on my father's payroll.

My life was simple, arduous and, by the standards we apply to our
children nowadays, rather grim. But I was by no means unhappy. I
was adequately fed and clothed, and I had a room — a cubbyhole, to be
truthful — of my own. It was six feet by four, and contained, in addition
to my bed, a big pot-bellied stove. It was a dusty, smelly sort of room,
but the window gave on a big courtyard, and I was not aware of being
cramped. I did not have the time to worry about my comforts. In the
morning I had to be at school at nine o'clock, and I stayed there until
two-thirty in the afternoon. Then I had my homework, my daily Hebrew
studies, which I pursued under the direction of a private teacher, and
two or three hours with my pupil. I also did some general reading and
took a certain part in the Zionist youth activities, such as they were then.
But of these more later.

The school regime in Pinsk, and for that matter, I suppose, in all
other Russian cities at that time, was very different from that of the
Western world. There was no contact between teachers and pupils, and
little intercourse among the pupils themselves. As far as the Jewish boys
were concerned, the teachers were looked upon as the representatives
of an alien and hostile power; they were more tchinovniks (officials)
than pedagogues, and in them human emotions and relationships were
replaced by formalism and by the instinct for climbing inherent in the
Russian official. With few exceptions — and there were some — the teacher
had his eye not so much on the pupils as on the head of the school ; the
road to the good opinion of his chief, and therefore of promotion, was
not the road of pedagogics, but of strict adherence to the decrees and
ukases issued by the higher authorities. These encircled pupil and teacher
with a rigid framework of restrictions designed to impede the free
growth of the mind. Our real intellectual interests — I am speaking of
the Jewish boys — ^lay outside the school gates. Thus, we seldom bor-
rowed books from the school library, as these were carefully chosen for
their lack of interest; and though it was forbidden for a schoolboy to
make use of the public libraries, we surreptitiously obtained books from
them, at the risk of severe punishment.

There were in our school teachers who, without knowledge of their
subject, without the slightest training in pedagogy, had obtained their
positions through influential friends who probably considered them unfit
for any other office in the Russian bureaucracy, but good enough for a
schoolteacher's job in a provincial town like Pinsk. Even so, I still can-
not understand how a man like our teacher of mathematics ever came
to be appointed. Almost as far back as I can remember, our lessons with
him really consisted of long wrangles between the teacher and the pupils

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

21

— ^the latter having both a greater aptitude for the subject, and a more
solid knowledge of it, than he. In geometry and algebra he could never
follow our arguments, or explain the simplest theorem. The poor man
coughed, spluttered, hemmed and hawed, and turned every color of the
rainbow ; and we, with the natural ferocity of youth, continued to pester
and torment him with questions which he could not answer. I am afraid
this sport was one of the highlights of our school activity ; still, the man
had no business to be pretending to teach mathematics — or anything else.

Another source of amusement was our teacher of religion, who was,
of course, a pope, or priest. We suspected that he did not always come
into class quite sober; at all events, the intensity of the redness of his
nose gave rise to considerable comment and speculation among his
pupils. Jewish boys were not obliged to attend the courses in the Chris-
tian religion; but the classes in Slavonic, ancient and modern, were
compulsory for all. Ancient Slavonic is rather difficult; I think the
grammar is similar to that of classic Greek. This teacher did know
something about his subject, but as a Christian and a Russian official
he felt it beneath his dignity to assume that his Jewish pupils would
ever succeed in learning or understanding anything of the language.
Unfortunately for him they were the only ones who did. For, more to
annoy him than for any other reason, we made a point of being well
up on this subject. He was often compelled to fall back on us in the
question period, and this invariably threw him into a rage. He used to
set traps for us, but almost always we were ready for him, and the
contests usually ended in his ignominious defeat. Thus Judaism tri-
umphed in the midst of oppression.

There was one outstanding exception among my teachers, a man by
the name of Kornienko, to whom, very possibly, I owe whatever I have
been able to achieve in the way of science. He was a chemist, with a
genuine love of his subject and a considerable reputation in the world
at large. He was, in fact, the glory of our school, and this perhaps
explains why he was able to do as much as he did without falling foul
of the authorities. He had managed to assemble a little laboratory, a
luxury which was then almost unknown in Russian high schools. His
attitude toward his pupils was in wholesome contrast with that of the
other members of the staff. He was a decent, liberal-minded fellow, and
treated us like human beings. He entered into conversation with us, and
did his best to interest us in the wider aspects of natural science. I need
hardly say that most of us responded warmly, and there grew up a kind
of friendship between pupils and teacher — a, state of affairs unimagi-
nably rare in the Russian schools of that day.

It was Kornienko who gave me my impulse toward chemistry. In ttie
last, or seventh, class — I was then in my eighteenth year — ^the students
were allowed a certain amount of specialization. I had at least one hour

22

TRIAL AND ERROR

of theoretical chemistry each day, and two or three whole mornings in
the laboratory. Even so we did not get very far, for the poverty of the
general standard could not but affect Kornienko's work. I found this
out when I got to a German university where, in my first year, I had
to learn as entirely new material which to the German students was
merely a revision of the work they had been doing in their last high-
school year. My equipment in mathematics and physics was of course
still poorer. I have often wondered what would have been the course of
my life if it had not been for the chance intervention of this gifted and
fine-spirited teacher.

In spite of everything, one could not say that our school life was
unpleasant; it may at times have dulled our wits, but we bore that
quite cheerfully. I did well at the examinations, and generally received
top marks, which was nothing to boast about in the circumstances. School
and homework absorbed the minor part of my energies ; and even when
my Hebrew studies and my tutorial duties were thrown in, there was
enough left for general activities, and from my fifteenth year on I was
drawn more and more into the life of the city, and into the nascent
Zionist movement.

Pinsk was not a pleasant town to live in, though I did not become
aware of this fact until I had seen a little more of the world. Low lying,
malarial, it was, like Motol, mud in the spring and autumn, ice in the
winter, dust in the summer. When the rains came the lower part of
Pinsk was flooded, and from three sides could be approached only in
boats. Of the streets, two or three were paved, or, rather, covered with
cobblestones. As the floods retreated with the approach of summer, a
miasmal mist went up out of the earth, and after it came a thick dust.
Since all these things belonged to the natural order, it did not occur to
me that there was anything to complain about, and I cannot say that
my boyhood was a time of discontent.

But I must not forget the happy interludes. There were the summer
journeys on my uncle's rafts up the canal to Brest Litovsk and down
the Boug to Warsaw. There were visits home, in the summer, during
the Christmas vacation, and for the Passover, and these trips were
adventures in themselves. For though it was, as I have said, only twenty-
five miles from Pinsk to Motol, the journey consumed at least twenty-
four hours. In the winter the trip was made by sleigh; in the spring
and summer — ^wind, weather and mud permitting — by cart. Of course
I did not hire a cart for myself ; that would have cost as much as three
or four rubles. I waited for an opportunity. Usually it was a shopkeeper
from Motol who came to Pinsk to replenish his stock. I would climb
into the cart, make myself comfortable among the hay, straw, jars,
barrels and bundles of provisions, and settle down for the journey.
Sometimes we passed the night in the open air. The wagon was drawn

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

23

to a side, an(| man and beast slept under the stars for a few hours. We
might perhaps have made the journey in less than a day, if we had dared
to move a little faster. But the pace was regulated by the condition of
the road, the structure of the wagon, and the amount of jolting which
a human being can stand. We rattled along on those rutted tracks, the
soul almost shaken out of our bodies, the wagon threatening to fall to
pieces.

Sometimes I traveled alone, that is, with the merchant and the peasant
driver; sometimes an uncle was with me, or father was returning home
from Pinsk. And sometimes we did not pass the night under the open
sky. There were two or three inns between Pinsk and Motol; there
was also, halfway between the two towns, the estate of the powerful
Count Skirmunt, a great landowner, and one of the fabulous figures of
the vicinity. This estate contained immense gardens, woods, an entire
village, Poretsche, and several small factories. Many, many years after
I had left Motol and Pinsk behind me, I met the legendary Count Skir-
munt. He was at that time the Ambassador of the liberated Poland to
the Court of St. James ; I sat next to him at a dinner. I told him how,
in my boyhood, I had used to steal apples from his — or his father’s —
orchard at Poretsche. He remembered two of my uncles, with whom
he had done business.

In the winter the trip between Pinsk and Motol was shorter. The road
was smooth, for snow had fallen, and the topmost layer had thawed and
then frozen again to make a perfect surface for the sleigh. I remember
that I used to be made sick by the monotonous whiteness of the roads
and fields; so I would be bundled up in overcoats and rugs and des-
patched all of a piece. I would fall asleep, and the first thing I knew we
were in Poretsche.

The Jewish drivers were sui generis: jolly companions, full of worldly
wit and wisdom. They might be without much book learning, but they
were far from ignorant, and could while away the hours of the journey
with wonderful stories. When they reached a good piece of road they
would travel over it again and again, backward and forward — ^it was
such a relief not to be jolted to pieces.

In Pinsk, as in Motol, I had no social contact with gentiles. They
formed, indeed, a minority of the population, and consisted chiefly of
administrators, railway officials and workers, the management of the
canal and a number of big landowners whose estates were in the vicinity
but who maintained town houses. The Jewish population differed from
that of other towns of the Pale in that it possessed, in addition to the
usual overload of traders and shopkeepers, a comparatively large class
of river and factory workers. Jews made up the majority of the porters,
navvies and raft pilots. These last were a skilled class. It needed training
and aptitude to manipulate the rafts upstream on the Pina and into the

TRIAL AND ERROR

S4

canal in such a fashion as not to damage the locks. Other Jews worked
in the match factory and the sawmills.

Jewish Pinsk was divided into two communities, Pinsk proper and
Karlin, each with its own set of synagogues. Rabbis, hospitals and
schools. Karlin, where I lived, was considered, as they say in America,
the right side of the tracks. It was here that I grew from boyhood into
early manhood, here that I had my social and intellectual contacts, and
here that I was inducted into the Zionist movement. Pinsk, then, set the
double pattern of my life ; it gave me my first bent toward science, and
it provided me with my first experiences in Zionism.

These two areas of my life were sharply separated. Zionism was never
tolerated as a political movement by the czarist regime, and practical
Zionist work, primitive enough in those days, was carried on under the
guise of philanthropy. In 1884, about a year before I came to Pinsk,
there had taken place the famous Kattowitz Conference of the Choveve
Zion — ^the Lovers of Zion — ^the first gathering of its kind. It marked,
historically, the conscious, organized beginning of Zionism, and it fol-
lowed closely the onset of the era of repression. Pinsk became one of
the centers of the Chibath Zion. Rabbi David Friedman — ^who was
known, according to the Jewish fashion, by the affectionate diminutive
of Reb Dovidl, also as Reb Dovidl Karliner, from the name of his com-
munity — was a member of the Presidium of the Kattowitz Conference,
and therefore the titular head of the movement in Pinsk. This Reb
Dovidl was a remarkable figure, combining the highest traditions of
old-world Jewish saintliness and scholarship with a feeling for the spirit
of the times. He was a tiny, shriveled-up wisp of a man, with a won-
derful, transfigured face. He fasted every Monday and Thursday, and
was considered even among pietists as exceptionally scrupulous in his
observance of all the minutiae of the Jewish ritual. He had a little
synagogue attached to his house, and it was there that I attended serv-
ices. The brother-in-law of Reb Dovidl was Reb Yechiel Pinnes (a name
connected with Pina and Pinsk), one of the earliest settlers in Palestine
hailing from our parts ,* he preceded, if I am not mistaken, the group of
the Bilus, as they were called, who went out from Russia as the first
modern colonizers in 1882. Several branches of the family also settled
in America, and scores of their descendants are scattered throughout
the United States. The name has been Americanized into Pines.

For a community of its size Pinsk contributed an unusually large
number of workers and pioneers in Zionism. There was Judah Berges,
who married into a Pinsk family, a distinguished Maskil, (a follower
of the Haskallah, or new Enlightenment) and a man with a genuine
gift of leadership. There was Aaron Eisenberg who went out to Palestine
when I was still in Pinsk. His departure was a tremendous event and
Pinsk gave him a great send-off. It was with a sense of awe that we

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

25

assembled that evening and gazed with our own eyes on a man who was
actually going to Palestine. He promised to write us, and tell us what
the land looked like; and afterward we waited eagerly for every scrap
of news about his movements and his adventures. Eisenberg settled in
Rehovoth, became one of its most useful and most prosperous colonists,
and contributed greatly to the development of the region. Forty years
later I bought the land for our house in Rehovoth from the children of
Aaron Eisenberg. George Halpern, who many years later became the
manager of the Jewish Colonial Trust, likewise came from Pinsk, so did
Isaac Naiditch, one of the founders — in 1920 — of the Keren Hayesod,
the Palestine Foundation Fund, an important instrument in the
building of Jewish Palestine. The Shertoks, too, came from Pinsk;
Moshe Shertok of the younger generation of that family, brought up in
Palestine, is a leading figure in the political life of modern Palestine.
During my boyhood years in Pinsk, Zvi Hirsch Masliansky, the great
folk orator, taught at a local Hebrew school. He was one of the most
beloved and most influential of the magidim, or popular preachers. He
settled afterward in America, and was as beloved among the Yiddish-
speaking masses there as he had been in Russia. He died a few years
ago, an octogenarian, one of the last remaining links with the heroic
^arly days of Zionism. These are names familiar perhaps only to
Zionists ; but they were the names of men who had a vision of redemption
nearly sixty years ago, who transmuted the dream into tangible reality
and who, in the face of infinite discouragement on the part of practical
people, sowed the seeds of that considerable achievement which is Jewish
Palestine today.

We must not think of Zionism in Pinsk fifty odd years ago, long
before the coming of Theodor Herzl, in terms of the modem movement.
Organized activity in the present-day sense simply did not exist. A youth
Drganization was undreamed of. There were casual meetings of the
older people, at which the youngsters sneaked in, to sit in a corner. On
rare occasions when a circular was sent out, we were permitted to
address the envelopes. Our financial resources were comically primitive ;
we dealt in rubles and kopecks. One of the main sources of income was
the collection made on the Feast of Purim. Youngsters were enlisted
to distribute leaflets and circulars from house to house, and modest
contributions would be made by most of the householders. Not all, by
any means. Not the very rich ones, for instance, like the Lurias, the
^reat clan of industrialists with branches in Warsaw, Libau and Danzig,
who owned the match factory in Pinsk. For already, in those early days,
the classic divisions in Zionism, which have endured till very recent
days, manifested themselves. The Jewish magnates were, with very few
exceptions, bitterly anti-Zionist. Our supporters were the middle class
and the poor. An opposition — in the shape of a labor movement — did not

s6 TRIAL AND ERROR

exist yet, for the Bund, the Jewish revolutionary labor organization, was
not founded until 1897 — ^the year of the first Zionist Congress.

Of course I took an active part in these money collections. Because of
my position as ‘‘tutor^’ in the home of a patrician family, I used to be al-
lotted not only the house of my patron, but the houses of all the relatives,
in-laws, sons- and daughters-in-law. Purim always came in the midst
of the March thaw, and hour after hour I would go tramping through
the mud of Pinsk, from end to end of the town. I remember that my
mother was accustomed, for reasons of economy, to make my overcoats
much too long for me, to allow for growth, so that as I went I repeatedly
stumbled over the skirts and sometimes fell headlong into the icy slush
of the streets. I worked late into the night, but usually had the immense
satisfaction of bringing in more money than anyone else. Such was my
apprenticeship for the activities which, on a rather larger scale, have
occupied so many years of my later life.

Another activity which engaged my attention — ^this was only indi-
rectly related to Zionism — ^was the agitation for the modernized, im-
proved cheder — ^the cheder metukan — ^which sprang up about this time
in Russian Jewry. A reform was badly needed, not simply in regard to
the accommodations, pedagogy and curriculum, but in regard to the
entire attitude toward the elementary education of young children. It
was extraordinary that the Jews, with whom the education of their
children was a matter of the profoundest concern, paid no attention to
the first stages of that education. Any sort of luckless failure in the
community was considered good enough to teach children their letters,
and the word melamed, or teacher, was synonymous with schlimihl.
Perhaps Jewish fathers had the notion that children would pick up
the rudiments of reading and writing, of Hebrew and Bible, anyhow.
So they did, I suppose; but at great cost in childhood happiness, and
at the risk of acquiring a deep distaste for Jewish learning. The cheder
metukan sought to introduce the element of humanism into early studies,
with greater emphasis on Hebrew as a living tongue, on the secular
aspects of the Jewish tradition, and on worldly subjects which were
considered anathema by the old generation. My enthusiastic support of
the new type of cheder got me into trouble with the ultraorthodox, who
threatened to denounce me to the police as an atheist, revolutionary,
enemy of God and disturber of the peace.

Looking back from the vantage point of present-day Zionism, I can
see that we had not the slightest idea of how the practical ends of the
movement were to be realized. We knew that the doors of Palestine
were closed to us. We knew that every Jew who entered Palestine was
given ''the red ticket,” which he had to produce on demand, and by
virtue of which he could be expelled at once by the Turkish authorities.
We knew that the Turkish law forbade the acquisition of land by Jews.

SCHOOLDAYS IN PINSK

27

Perhaps if we had considered the matter too closely, or tried to be too
systematic, we would have been frightened off. We merely went ahead
in a small, blind, persistent way. Jews settled in Palestine, and they
were not expelled. They bought land, sometimes through straw men,
sometimes by bribes, for Turkish officialdom was even more corrupt
than the Russian. Houses were built, in evasion of the law. Between
baksheesh and an infinite variety of subterfuges, the first little colonies
were created. Things got done, somehow ; not big things, but enough to
whet the appetite and keep us going.

The obstinacy and persistence of the movement cannot be understood
except in terms of faith. This faith was part of our make-up ; our Jewish-
ness and our Zionism were interchangeable; you could not destroy the
second without destroying the first. We did not need propagandizing.
When Zvi Hirsch Masliansky, the famous folk orator, came to preach
Zionism to us, he addressed the convinced. Of course we loved listening
to him, for he spoke beautifully, and he invariably drew on texts from
the book of Isaiah, which all of us knew by heart. But we heard in his
moving orations only the echo of our innermost feelings.

This is not to deny that there was a wide assimilatory fringe in Jewish
life. For that matter we, the Zionists, did not remain indifferent to
Russian civilization and culture. I think I may say that we spoke and
wrote the language better, were more intimately acquainted with its
literature, than most Russians. But we were rooted heart and soul in
our own culture, and it did not occur to us to give it up in deference
to another. For the first time we fought the assimilationist tendency on
its own ground, that is to say, in terms of a modern outlook. We had
our periodicals, we had our contemporaneous writers, as well as our
ancient traditions. We read Ha-Zephirah and Ha-Melits and Ha-
Schachar, the Hebrew weeklies and dailies; we read Smolenskin and
Pinsker and Mohilever and Achad Ha-am, the protagonists of the
Chibath Zion. There was a genuine renaissance in Hebrew, coinciding
with the birth of the modern Yiddish classics, the works of Mendele
Mocher S'forim, J. L. Peretz, Sholom Aleichem, which we also read
eagerly. Hebrew was the pride and special symbol of Zionism, however.
I, for instance, never corresponded with my father in any other language,
though to mother I wrote in Yiddish. I sent my father only one Yiddish
letter * he returned it without an answer.

The assimilationists in Pinsk — ^as in other Jewish towns — ^were drawn
from the intelligentsia, which meant the professionals. They were the
doctors, pharmacists, dentists and engineers. Once they had been op-
posed by nothing more than the inertia of the Jewish mass ; now they
were up against a conscious and enthusiastic countermovement, and
they found the going difficult. A story was told in Pinsk of a typical
assimilationist doctor who settled in the community and distinguished

28

TRIAL AND ERROR

himself by refusing to talk anything but Russian to his Jewish patients.
Not that he did not know Yiddish as well as any of them, but he con-
sidered Russian bon ton, and good business — one could charge higher
fees in Russian. Shortly after him another doctor opened a practice in
Pinsk, and this one, a Zionist, spoke Yiddish and even Hebrew with
his patients. The competition made itself felt, so the assimilationist doc-
tor rediscovered his mother tongue. Word was brought to the Zionist
doctor: ^‘Your competitor is speaking Yiddish!’^ “Wait,^’ was the
answer, ‘T’ll have him speaking Hebrew before I’m through with him.”

These, then, were the beginnings of Zionism, in the midst of which
I lived in my boyhood. They came from deep sources ; and if the practical
manifestations were rather pitiful at first, if a whole generation had to
pass away and another take its place before action became planned and
impressive, the significance of those who nurtured and transmitted the
impulse must not be forgotten. It was because of them that Herzl found
a movement ready for him. If other evidence of the significance of
Russian proto-Zionism were needed, we need only look at the foundation
layers of the present Jewish population of Palestine. Pinsk and Vilna
and Odessa and Warsaw, and a hundred lesser-known Jewish com-
munities are there, the first contributors of the human material of the
Return.

Both by way of tribute to my parents, and as a part of this history,
I must make note of the record of my family in relation to Palestine.
It is symbolic of the reality that Zionism became for so many Russian
Jewish families.

There were twelve of us who grew up, children of Oser and Rachel
Weizmann, seven girls and five boys ; I was the third child. Of the twelve,
nine settled permanently in Palestine. All of them were, I think, useful
to the country, constructive, each in his or her own way. In my mother’s
latter years, when we came together to celebrate the Passover in her
home in Haifa, thirty-five of us, sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-
in-law, grandsons and granddaughters, sat down at table for the seder.
My mother, presiding over the ceremony, always shed a few tears for
those who were still dispersed. We brought not only our principles to
Palestine, but our own population.

CHAPTER 3

I Turn Westward

The Educational Dilemma — First Contact with the West —
Germany and German Jewry in the Nineties — Pfungstadt and
Dr. BarnesSj the Assimilationist — Gernmn Anti-Semitism —
/ Return to Pinsk — My First Chemical Job — Back to Germany
— Berlin and the Russian Jewish Student Colonies of the West
— Russian Revolutionaries and Zionism — Revolutionary As-
similationism — Zionist Leaders in the Making — Achad Hor-am,
Philosopher y Critic and Teacher — The Russian- J ewish Scien-
tific Society — The Beginnings of Life-Long Friendships —
— Penniless Students — Endless Talk — Music and Theater —
A Missionary among the Russian Marshes — Growing up.

iVlY LIFE, like the life of so many Russian Jews of my generation,
has been one marked regularly by important and fateful decisions.
The years did not run along prepared grooves. There was not with us
Jews, as with most peoples in that remote time, the normal, natural
development of one’s career, the expected thing, with only minor varia-
tions. Every division of one’s life was a watershed.

Here I was, eighteen years old, a graduate of the Real-Gymnasium
of Pinsk. What was to be the next step? That I was to continue my
studies was taken for granted. But where? In Russia? Was I to try to
break through the narrow gate of the numerus clausus, and enroll in
the University of Kiev — as my two brothers did some years later — or
of Petrograd ? I would no doubt have succeeded. But the road was one
of ceaseless chicanery, deception and humiliation. I might pass the
difficult entrance examination — ^Jewish students were given a special
set of more difficult papers — and still fail to obtain the necessary “resi-
dential rights.” I would then have to go through the mummery of enroll-
ment as an artisan holding a fake job in one of the forbidden cities.
Then there would be years of bribery and uncertainty ; endless dodging
of police roundups; constant changes of address. I loathed the thought
of all this furtiveness. Moreover, I disliked Russia intensely, not Russia
proper, that is, but czarist Russia. AIL my inclinations pointed to the

29

30

TRIAL AND ERROR

West, whither thousands of Russian Jewish students had moved by
now, in a sort of educational stampede.

So I went West, and only the choice of the university was accidental.
A friend of the family’ had a son attending a Jewish boarding school
in the village of Pfungstadt, near Darmstadt in Germany. Learning that
there was a vacancy on the staff for a junior teacher of Hebrew and
Russian, he recommended me, and I was offered the position. I had
no idea what the place was like — which was perhaps fortunate. All I
cared was that I would get my board, lodging and three hundred marks
— ^about seventy-five dollars — a year in exchange for two hours of tuition
a day,* that Pfungstadt was less than an hour away, by train, from
Darmstadt, where there was a university ; and that between my stipend
and a little assistance from home I would be able to pay my fees, buy
the necessary books and get through my courses. Afterward? Well, I
did not know. Perhaps I would return to Russia, in spite of the wretch-
edness of our lot there, and make the best of it under the czarist regime
until the dawn of a brighter day. Perhaps I would go to Palestine.
Perhaps I would remain in the West. In any case, I would not have
to swindle my way through the higher education.

But my exit from Russia had its characteristic touch. Everybody in
that country had a domestic passport, or identification card. One needed
that in traveling from city to city. To go abroad one had to have a
foreign passport, a rather expensive document. Since I had barely
enough funds to get me to Pfungstadt fourth class, and to see me through
the first month, I had to dispense with the foreign passport. I became,
for the nonce, a raft worker, and as such entitled to make the round
trip on the river to Danzig without a foreign passport. At Thorn, the
first stop on German territory, I picked up my bundles and , skipped.

It was a marvelous new world that I entered with a beating heart, a
clean, neat, orderly world, which bewildered me for two reasons. First,
it was so different from the gentile world I had been accustomed to.
Second, my Pinsk Yiddish which, like most Russian Jews, I had taken
to be next door to High German, turned out to be incomprehensible to
the Germans — ^very much to my astonishment and resentment. However,
even without the barrier of language, the country would have been
strange enough. One trifling illustrative incident sticks in my mind.
When I reached Frankfort on the Main after a sit-up journey of some
twenty-four hours on the fourth-class wooden benches, I went into a
post office and sent a telegram to Pfungstadt. I counted out the money
carefully and waited for a signed receipt. I waited and waited — it was
unimaginable to me that one gave money to a government official and
didn’t get a receipt for it. The man behind the window managed to get
it through to me that in Germany government officials could be trusted
with small change.

1 TURN WESTWARD

Pfungstadt was my introduction to one of the queerest chapters in
Jewish history: the assimilated Jews of Germany, then in the high
summer of their illusory security, and mightily proud of it. I was
a boy of nineteen, naive, ignorant and impressionable, I did not know
then that Germany was in its great period of post-Bismarckian expan-
sion, making gigantic strides forward among the world Powers. I did
not know that German Jewry was exerting itself frantically to efface
its own identity, to be accepted as German of the Germans. I did not
see persons as types, and I did not think in terms of historic forces.
My reactions were direct and personal. I saw different human beings,
they aroused certain emotions in me; and this direct relationship was
my sole guide to the world around me.

The townlet of Pfungstadt was famous all over Germany for its
brewery, and among the German Jews for its Jewish boarding school.
The head of this school was a Dr. Barness, a man who in his own way
was even more bewildering to me than the German gentiles. He was
pious in the extreme, that is to say, he practiced the rigid, formal piety
of Frankfort Jewish orthodoxy. The school was kosher; it had in con-
stant attendance a Mashgiach, or overseer of the ritual purity of the
food. There were no classes on the Sabbath; no writing was done on
that day; prayers were said three times daily, morning, afternoon and
evening. But it was not the orthodoxy I had known and loved at home.
It was stuffy, it was unreal, it had no folk background. It lacked warmth
and gaiety and color and intimacy. It did not interpenetrate the life of
the teachers and pupils ; it was a cold discipline imposed from the outside.

Dr. Barness was completely assimilated, and described himself as ‘‘a
German of the Mosaic persuasion.” He took his Judaism to mean that
in all respects save that of a religious ritual he was as German, in cul-
ture, background and personality, as any descendant of the Cerusci.
This philosophy he preached in and out of season, both at school and
everywhere else, but especially at the meetings which he addressed on
the subject of anti-Semitism. For anti-Semitism was eating deep into
Germany in those days, a heavy, solid, bookish anti-Semitism far more
deadly, in the long run, than the mob anti-Semitism of Russian city
hooligans and the cynical exploitation of it practiced by Russian politi-
cians and prelates. It worked itself into the texture of the national
consciousness. Even Dr. Barness could not ignore the evidence of Jew-
hatred about him. But he regarded it as the result of a slight misunder-
standing. If some Germans were anti-Semitically inclined, it was because
they did not know the sterling qualities of the Jews, as exemplified in
Dr. Barness and his like. They had to be told — ^that was all. A little
enlightenment, judiciously applied, and anti-Semitism would simply
vanish.

With all my youthful naivete I just could not stomach Dr. Barness^

TRIAL AND ERROR

32

rather fatuous and self-satisfied philosophy of anti-Semitism ; and though
it was shared by all the teachers in the school, I did not yet suspect that
it was a characteristic of most of German Jewry. Naturally I did not
know that I would come up against it repeatedly in later years, in con-
tacts with German — ^and not only German — ^Jewish leaders, greater and
wiser men than Dr. Barness, who on this subject were as trivial, as
evasively blind, as he. At the time I only knew — ^when I began, with an
increasing grasp of the language, to understand what he was talking
about — ^that he caused me the acutest discomfort. Without a philosophy
of history or of anti-Semitism, I felt clearly enough that Dr. Barness
was an intellectual coward and a toady. Toward the end of my stay in
Pfungstadt I got into an argument with him. Hearing him, for the
hundredth time or so, say that if the Germans would only have their
eyes opened to the excellent qualities of the Jews, etc., etc., etc., I
answered desperately: ^‘Herr Doktor, if a man has a piece of something
in his eye, he doesn’t want to know whether it’s a piece of mud or a
piece of gold. He just wants to get it out!’' Herr Doktor was speechless.

It was quite useless to argue with Dr. Barness, or with any of the
teachers. Their conviction regarding the essential triviality and evanes-
cent character of anti-Semitism was a complex which was related to
their anxiety not to believe that a Jewish people existed. I remember
how, shortly after my arrival, one of the teachers asked me what
nationality I was; and when I answered, ^'Ein Russischer Jude'^ (a
Russian Jew), he stared at me, then went off into gales of laughter.
He had never heard of such a thing. A German, yes. A Russian, yes.
Judaism, yes. But a Russian Jew! That was to him the height of the
ridiculous.

The piety of the boarding school was to me utterly wild. I just did
not feel any religion in it. Perhaps this effect was heightened by the
wretchedness of the food, on which, I am afraid, some of the considerable
profits of the institution were made. Moreover, I was lonely and desper-
ately homesick for Pinsk, for my family, for Motol, for my friends, for
the world I knew. My contacts with German life then, and later during
my years as a student in Berlin, were few ; but such as they were, they
left me ill at ease. It was better in Pinsk, though Pinsk was Russia, and
Russia meant czardom and the Pale and the numerus clausus and po-
groms, In Russia at least we, the Jews, had a culture of our own, and
a high one. We had standing in our own eyes. We did not dream that
our Jewish being was something to be sloughed off furtively. But in
Germany, surrounded by efficiency and power, the Jews were obsessed
by a sense of inferiority which urged them ceaselessly to deny themselves
and to regard their heritage with shame — ^and at the same time to sing
their own praises in the ears of those who would not listen. It was here,
in Germany, that I learned the full meaning of what Achad Ha-am

I TURN WESTWARD 33

expressed in his famous essay Avdut betoch Cheruth, ^'Slavery in the
Midst of Freedom/' addressed to the assimilatory Western Jews.

Darmstadt was a pleasant enough town, but I saw next to nothing of
it. I had no time. On weekdays I got up at five, to make the train which
arrived in Darmstadt at six-thirty. The university did not open until
seven-thirty, so I had to walk the streets for an hour. I got back to
Pfungstadt at half-past four, and taught Russian and Hebrew till half-
past six. Since I had not the money for a regular meal in Darmstadt,
I took with me a brotchen (roll) and a piece of cheese, or of sausage.
That had to last me until suppertime, and supper, as I have indicated,
was a wretched affair, though it was preceded by a solemn benediction
and followed by a long grace. I had to work late into the night, learning
German and trying to fill the gaps in my scientific and general education,
which was far behind the standards of the German high schools. Between
overwork, malnutrition and loneliness I had a rather cheerless time of
it. I stuck it out for two semesters and had something approaching a
breakdown. My Pfungstadt experience left a permanent mark on my
health; nearly fifty years later a doctor traced a lung hemorrhage to
the effects of my first eight months in Germany.

I left Pfungstadt without regrets, and remember it without pleasure.
I have not retained a single permanent relationship as a result of my
stay there, which is a rare experience for me. Many years later, when
the school was in its decline, I came across one of its advertisements in
a German Jewish periodical. It had taken to announcing that ‘'Dr. Chaim
Weizmann taught here.” But apparently even this evidence of its one-
time academic distinction was of no avail, for it ultimately closed its
doors. Just before that happened the son of Dr. Barness wrote to me
asking me to recommend him some pupils. My conscience would not let
me. It was an obnoxious place.

The situation at home was bad. The family had moved to Pinsk, for
a number of reasons. The younger children were growing up, and it
was impossible to maintain them in school at Pinsk, unless the home
was there. Father could conduct his business from Pinsk as easily as
from Motol; our only reason for staying in Motol had been the house.
Pinsk was in one way better than Motol, because father's rafts all had
to pass through Pinsk, which meant he would be at home oftener. But
the first period of resettlement was a hard one. It was out of the question
to send me back to the West. So I stayed in Pinsk for a year, working
in a small chemical factory owned by one of the Lurias, and I took
advantage of this interruption in my education to get rid of my military
obligations, which had been hanging over me like a nightmare. It goes
without saying that I had no intention of wasting four years serving
Czar Nicholas. I appeared before the conscription board, was duly
examined and duly pronounced fit. By a marvelous stroke of luck I

34

TRIAL AND ERROR

managed to talk my way out of the army in a special interview with the
local military commander, a decent and cultured Russian who thought
it a pity to have my education interrupted.

At the end of a year father’s business — ^he was already in partnership
with his gifted and ambitious son-in-law — ^took a turn for the better.
These two decided to finance my education between them: no jobs, and
no provincial university this time. I was to go to Berlin, and enroll in
the Polytechnicum, which was considered one of the three best scientific
schools in Europe. I was to have a hundred marks — ^twenty-five dollars
— a month, not a munificent allowance, but one that would just about
enable me to get along after paying for my courses ; in any case, it was
more than the majority of foreign students in Berlin had to live on. And
so, in the summer of 1895, I set my face westward again.

The difference between Berlin and Darmstadt had to do with much
more than academic rating. Darmstadt was a little place, without a
foreign student body. I had chosen it as a pis aller, because of the job
in Pfungstadt, Berlin was a world metropolis, the first I learned to
know. It was at the center of the intellectual currents of the time. Above
all, it had an enormous Russian- Jewish student colony, which was to
play as important a role in molding my life as the university itself.

These student colonies were an interesting and characteristic feature
of Western Europe in the days of czarist Russia. In Berlin, Berne,
Zurich, Geneva, Munich, Paris, Montpellier, Nancy, Heidelberg, young
Russian Jews, driven from the land of their birth by persecution, by
discrimination and by intellectual starvation, constituted special and
identifiable groups. The women students were almost as numerous as
the men. In some places they outnumbered the men. Medicine was the
favorite study, for it offered the most obvious road to a livelihood;
besides, it was associated with the idea of social service, of contact with
the masses, of opportunity to teach, by precept and example. Engineer-
ing and chemistry came next, with law in the third or fourtli place. Like
myself, most of these students were vague about the future > were they
to return to Russia, or were they to commit themselves to the West?
They did not know. But whatever their choice of subject, whatever their
plans, they were nearly all of a definite type. They belonged to the
middle and lower middle classes ; for the rich Jews of Russia — ^like the
rich anywhere — could ‘^arrange” things, and seldom had to send their
children to foreign universities. The Jewish students at the Western
universities were “rebels” in one sense or another; what else should
they be under the circumstances ? And they were, almost without excep-
tion, the children of ''bmlabatische'" parents, solid, respectable, intelligent
householders of the middle and lower middle class, people steeped in
Jewish tradition, instinctively liberal, ambitious — just like my father —
for their children, eager to burst the bonds of the past. Many of these

I TURN WESTWARD

35

youngsters had received a good Jewish education. They spoke Yiddish,
they read Hebrew, or at least were familiar with it.

The first westward tide of students had set in with the clamping down
of educational restrictions in the early eighties. In my day the colonies
were already well established ; they had a tradition and a character. They
were revolutionary in a peculiar sense, and in a specifically Russian
setting involving for the Jews a complete denial of Jewish identity. It
was an utterly anomalous situation. Jewish students in Western Europe
could not become part of the revolutionary movement unless they did
violence to their affections and affiliations by pretending that they had
no special emotional and cultural relationship to their own people. It
was a ukase from above. Also it was completely artificial; for these
young men and women were not ''assimilated''; they had not drifted
away from the mode of life of their parents. On the contrary there was
a deep and tender attachment to the ancient Jewish patterns. But the
"line," as we should call it nowadays, forbade such a relationship ; Zion-
ism was "counterrevolutionary."

This extraordinary ukase was soon challenged. Long before the com-
ing of Theodor Herzl, consciously Zionistic groups of Jewish students
in the Western universities were already fighting the assimilationist-
revolutionary movement, not on its revolutionary but on its assimila'-
tionist side. In Berlin there had been organized, five or six years before
my arrival, the Judisck-^Russisch WisM:^ith^Uiches Verem — the Jewish-
Russian Scientific Society.. Its leaders were all destfhed to become
prominent in the Zionist movement: Shmarya Levin, Leo Motzkin,
Nachman Syrkin, Victor Jacobson, Arthur Hantke, Heinrich Lowe,
Zelig Soskin, Willi Bambus, and many others. When I arrived in Berlin
some of these had already graduated, or had left for other universities.
Schmarya Levin, for instance — ^he developed into one of the great
tribunes of Zionism, a man of fascinating personality and dazzling
oratorical gifts — ^had gone to Koenigsberg to work on his doctorate
thesis. Sooner or later I got to know all of them; and with most of
them I developed enduring and lifelong relationships. I was to work
with them in the course of the next twenty, thirty, forty years, in Eng-
land, in America, in Palestine ; I was to fight at their side, or against
them, at the Zionist Congresses. I was to witness, together with them,
the development of the Zionist movement from what passed for a "freak”
phenomenon into a serious international force engaging the attention of
statesmen.

In short, this was a world Very different indeed from Pfungstadt and
Darmstadt. Here, in Berlin, I grew out of my boyhood Zionism, out of
my adolescence, into something like maturity. When I left Berlin for
Switzerland, in 1898, at the age of twenty-four, the adult pattern of my
life was set. Of course I learned a great deal in later years ; but no

TRIAL AND ERROR

36

fundamental change took place ; my political outlook, my Zionist ideology,
my scientific bent, my life’s purposes, had crystallized.

Of my fellow-students who afterward became my fellow-workers in
Zionism I shall have much to say, in this and in succeeding chapters;
for some of them became intimate and cherished friends; and the
Judisch'Russisch Verein could, without derogating from the role played
by similar student bodies in other Western universities, claim to have
been the cradle of the modern Zionist movement. But I must speak
first of a great man who was then living in Berlin, one whose influence
on us, on Russian Jewry, and on the Zionist movement, was incalculable.
Him, too, I was able to call, in later years, friend and comrade, though
he was more — ^he was adviser and teacher, too ; and I shall have much
to say about him in later chapters of this narrative.

Asher Ginsburg, best, indeed almost exclusively known under his
pen name of Achad Ha-am — ‘'One of the People” — ^was the foremost
thinker and Hebrew stylist of his generation. I was a boy of seventeen,
a high-school student in Pinsk, when he first sprang into prominence
with his article — ^a classic of Zionist history and literature — “Truth from
Palestine.” He was a keen and merciless critic from the beginning, a
man of unshakable intellectual integrity ; but his criticisms sprang from
a strongly affirmative outlook. For him Zionism was the Jewish renais-
sance in a spiritual-national sense. Its colonizational work, its political
program had meaning only as an organic part of the re-education of the
Jewish people. A facade of physical achievement meant little to him;
he measured both the organization in the exile and the colonies in
Palestine by their effect on Jewry. His first concern was with quality.
When he organized his society, the Bnai Mo she — ^the training school of
many of the Russian Zionist leaders — ^he put the emphasis on perfec-
tion. The membership was never more than one hundred, but every
member was tested by high standards of intelligence and devotion. As
a writer, Achad Ha-am never put forth less than his best ; he was pre-
cise and penetrating in his thoughts; he was sparing and exact in his
style, which became a model for a whole school. As an editor he was
not less exacting of his contributors. He criticized the early work of the
Chihath Zion because it had placed the chief emphasis on the physical
redemption of the Jewish people; he criticized the practical work of
Baron Edmond de Rothschild because the latter, in coming to the rescue
of the tottering colonies in Palestine, was animated — so it was thought,
but somewhat mistakenly, as I shall show later — only by a spirit of old-
fashioned philanthropy, which was less concerned with the remaking of
the colonists than with immediate economic results ; he criticized Herzl
because he did not find in the new Zionist movement the proper atten-
tion to the inner rehabilitation of Jewry which had to precede, or at least
accompany, the external solution of its problems.

I TURN WESTWARD

37

It is not easy to convey to this generation of Jewry in the West the
effect which Achad Ha-am produced on us. One might have thought
that such an attitude of caution, of restraint, of seeming pessimism,
would all but destroy a movement which had only just begun to take
shape. It was not the case, simply because Achad Ha-am was far from
being a negative spirit. Though essentially a philosopher and not a man
of action, he joined the executive of the Choveve Zion Federation, the
Odessa Committee as it was called, which supervised such practical
work as was being done in Palestine. His criticisms were likewise ex-
hortations. In his analysis of the spiritual slavery of '^emancipated’’
Western Jews he was forthright to the point of cruelty, and his argu-
ments hurt all the more because they were unanswerable. The appear-
ance of one of Achad Ha-am’s articles was always an event of prime
importance. We read him, and read him again, and discussed him end-
lessly. He was, I might say, what Gandhi has been to many Indians,
what Mazzini was to Young Italy a century ago.

We youngsters in Berlin did not see much of him. At rare intervals
we would drop in on him at his modest little home. But his presence
in our midst was a constant inspiration and influence.

We held our regular Saturday night meetings at a cafe, and mostly
it was the one attached to a certain Jewish hotel — ^the Hotel Zentrum
on the Alexanderplatz, because there, during lean periods, we could
get beer and sausages on credit. I think with something like a shudder
of the amount of talking we did. We never dispersed before the small
hours of the morning. We talked of everything, of history, wars, revolu-
tions, the rebuilding of society. But chiefly we talked of the Jewish
problem and of Palestine. We sang, we celebrated such Jewish festivals
as we did not go home for, we debated with the assimilationists, and
we made vast plans for the redemption of our people. It was all very
youthful and naive and jolly and exciting; but it was not without a
deeper meaning.

At first I was greatly overawed by my fellow-students, among whom
I was the youngest. Fresh from little Pinsk, with its petty Zionist col-
lections and small-town discussions, I was staggered by the sweep of
vision which Motzkin and Syrkin and the others displayed. There was
also a personal detail which oppressed me at the beginning. I was only
a student of chemistry ; they were students of philosophy, history, eco-
nomics, law and other "higher” things. I was immensely attracted to
them as persons and as Zionists ; but gradually I began to feel that in
their, personal preparations for life they were as vague as in their Zionist
plans. I had brought with me out of Russia a dread of the "eternal
student” type, the impractical idealist without roots in the worldly
struggle, a figure only too familiar in the Jewish world of forty and fifty
years ago. I refused to neglect the lecture hall and the laboratory, to

38 TRIAL AND ERROR

which I gave at least six or seven hours a day. I read on my subject, I
studied consistently, I acquired a taste for research work. In later years
I understood that even deeper motives impelled me in those days to attend
strictly to the question of my personal equipment for the life struggle. For
the time being it was enough for me to make up my mind that I was
going to achieve independence.

However, I had my share of the social and intellectual life of the
Verein, and of Jewish student life generally. It was a curious world,
existing, for us Jewish students, outside of space and time. We had
nothing to do with our immediate surroundings outside of the university.
In Berlin — and later when I was at Freiburg and Geneva — local pol-
itics, German and Swiss, did not exist for us. In part this was due to
our tacit fear of destroying our own refugee opportunities. But it sprang
mostly from the sheer intensity of our inner life. And there was a third
factor. If we constituted a kind of ghetto — not a compulsory one, of
course, and not in the negative sense — it was to a large extent because
most of us were practically penniless. I, with my hundred marks allow-
ance a month — that had to cover fees and books as well as living ex-
penses — ^was among the well-to-do. But I think I can safely say that
during all the years of my sojourn in Berlin I did not eat a single solid
meal except as somebody ^s guest. We lived among ourselves because
we could not afford to live separately.

Yet I need hardly say that we were thoroughly, sometimes even
riotously, happy. Poverty loses most of its pangs when it loses its
disgrace; and among us there was no stigma attached to poverty.
Besides, the poorest of us were never completely destitute, the richest
were never safe. Some, however, were definitely underfed. Nachman
Syrkin, gifted, high spirited, imaginative — ^lie later became one of the
founders of the Socialist Zionist party — ^was- among these. At the begin-
ning of every month he would turn up for a loan, and I pinched off
what I could from my allowance. Toward the end of the month, when
cash was fcarce, he would ask for a ""pledge,’’ that is, for something
which could be pawned. I had two pledges : one was a wonderful cushion,
which my mother had made me take along, and which brought a trifle
from the pawnbroker ; the other was my set of chemist’s weights, which
— ^I remember distinctly — ^was worth two marks and fifty pfennigs.
At the end of the month I was generally without cushion and without
weights.

Many of the friendships which I formed in those days lasted, as I
have said, for the rest of my life. But there were figures which belong
only to that period; they passed across the horizon and disappeared.
What became of them I do not know.

There was a student called Kunin, who was reckoned among the well-
to-do, for he lived, with two of his sisters, in a flat of his own. What

I TURN WESTWARD

39

he was studying, when he attended classes, no one really knew. We often
visited him, for his sisters were charming girls, and one could count
on an occasional meal there. All of us borrowed money from him, or
else a ‘^pledge.” Kunin had a magnificent fur coat which became a
tradition. He permitted us to pawn it, only on the strict condition that
we redeem it before the summer vacation, because then he had to go
home and take his coat with him to show his parents. Half of the winter
Kunin went around shivering; but toward summer he would appear
with his magnificent coat over his arm. As the swallows return for the
spring, so Kunin's coat returned for the summer. If you saw Kunin
coming down the street with his fur coat on his arm, you remembered
that the long vacation was at hand.

Among the poorest of the students there was a certain Tamarschenko,
who hailed from the Caucasus. Tamarschenko was working his way
through college. Three months of the year he worked in a sugar factory
— a device which served quite a number of students. One took a special
six-months course in sugar chemistry, and then, at the time of the beet
harvest, one got a job in a sugar factory, testing the sugar content of
the beets, the mash and the finished product. Thus one lived for three
months and saved something toward the expenses of the other nine. I
imagine that Tamarschenko never finished his course; there was some-
thing too helpless about him. He became the s3rmbol of ultimate schli-
mihldom in our student generation, and to his name was attached one of
the legends of the time. Tamarschenko used to come, at noon, to the
student restaurant, but could not afford fifty pfennigs for the regular
meal. He would therefore order a glass of beer for ten pfennigs, and
consume as many brotchen or rolls as he could lay his hands on. He had
a technique of his own. In order not to make his depredations too con-
spicuous, he would sit down between two baskets and reach out in
alternation on either side. One day, however, a waiter came over to
him, and said, very courteously: ''Herr Kandidat, next time you are
thirsty, please go to a bakery.” I

For months at a stretch we would turn vegetarian. We argued that
it was good for our health. It also happened to be cheaper. In addition
to which, the vegetarian restaurant we frequented had the best collection
of newspapers for its customers.

Our ghetto isolation was broken at two points : we loved music and
the theater, the former for its own sake, the latter because it also helped
us to learn the language. There were special prices for students, and a
row was reserved for them at all performances. On Sundays we got the
theater tickets for fifty pf ennigs> so that was our favorite day ; and if it
happened that three performances were being given — ^morning, after-
noon and evening, we would attend all three, eating our sandwiches
between the performances, and returning at night sated with Shakes-

40

TRIAL AND ERROR

peare, Goethe and Ibsen. The opera and the concert hall were more
expensive — a whole mark. But you could attend dress rehearsals for
seventy-five pfennigs.

Felix von Weingartner was the premier conductor in Berlin in those
days — ^and my hero. Nothing could keep me from his Beethoven con-
certs, one of which I remember for a particular reason. Spring was
always the time for the Beethoven cycle, and sometimes it happened
that the Ninth Symphony coincided with Purim, the j oiliest of the
Jewish half-festivals. On this particular Purim a dozen of us attended
the dress rehearsal of the Ninth Symphony. We sat in the cheapest
seats, of course, immediately under the roof. We followed the music
passionately and applauded wildly. Toward the close of the symphony
we stood up and, unable to restrain ourselves, sang along with the
orchestra. Weingartner was curious to know who those queer individuals
in the highest gallery could be, and after the performance he climbed
up the stairs to investigate. We not only told him that we were his
fervent admirers, we also reminded him that this was Purim, a day of
joy and gaiety in the Jewish tradition; whereupon the famous con-
ductor took us all to a Bierhalle and treated us to Wurstchen and beer.

Toward the end of my Berlin period we had managed to establish a
certain relationship with part of the Jewish community of the city. The
German Jews, who had looked upon us Russian- Jewish students as wild
men from the uncivilized East, learned to know us ; and they developed
a kind of liking for us — or perhaps merely a weakness. We were con-
sidered picturesque and interesting. The son of Hirsch Hildesheimer,
the leading Rabbi of Berlin, joined our ranks. Steinschneider, the phi-
losopher, dropped in now and again; once or twice he read a paper at
a meeting. Professor Landau received some of us. And every year we
gave a charity ball, which increasing numbers of the German Jews at-
tended. But I cannot say that anything resembling real intimacy ever
grew up between the Russian- Jewish student colony and the Jewish
community of Berlin. The gap between the two worlds was almost
unbridgeable.

In many ways it was our fault as much as theirs; and there were
unfavorable circumstances of no one’s making. We were in Berlin only
when the university was open; for the vacations most of us scattered
to our homes. During my student years in Berlin and Freiburg, as
well as later on, when I was teaching at the University of Geneva, I
invariably went back to Russia for my holidays. Nine months of the
year I spent in the free Western world; but every June I returned to
the East, and until the autumn I was the militant Zionist in the land
where Zionism was illegal. In the East our opponents were the Okhrana,
the Russian secret police. In the West it was an open fight, in the East
a conspiracy. The West preached liberty, the East practiced repression ;
but East and West alike were the enemies of the Zionist ideology.

I TURN WESTWARD 41

It was in the fen and the forest area about Pinsk that I did my first
missionary work, confining myself to the villages and townlets. In these
forlorn Jewish communities it was not a question of preaching Zionism
as much as of awakening them to action. I went about urging the Jews
of places like Motol to enroll in the Choveve Zio%\ to send delegates
to the first Zionist Congress, when that was called in 1897; to buy
shares in the first Zionist bank, the Jewish Colonial Trust, when that
was founded in 1898. Most of the meetings were held in the synagogues,
where in case of a police raid I would be ^'attending services’’ or ‘‘preach-
ing.” My dreams were opulent, my demands modest. It was a gala day
for me when I managed to raise twenty or thirty rubles for the cause.

I remember being sent out, on a certain day shortly before Yom
Kippur, the Day of Atonement, to a place called Kalenkovitch. It was
a townlet widely known because of its scholarly and saintly Rabbi. Hp,
like the famous Tarm of old, Nahum Gimso, had lost both legs in an
accident, and conducted his work from his bed. I left Pinsk at night
and arrived at the Kalenkovitch station at three in the morning. There
a peasant met me, and paddled me in his dugout through the marshes
to the village proper. In the predawn twilight some twenty Jews were
assembled in the tiny wooden synagogue. The Rabbi had been carried
to the meeting in his bed. He had heard of me, and before I addressed
the meeting he blessed me and my work. I spoke of the great time at
hand, of liberation, the Congress, the bank, the colonies, and persuaded
my listeners to buy thirty rubles’ worth of shares in the Jewish Colonial
Trust. Later, while I was waiting for the peasant to row me back to
the station, I got into conversation with an old Jew whom I had met
before, Reb Nissan, an itinerant peddler of prayerbooks, prayershawls,
phylacteries and other religious objects. He had seemed to listen intently,
and I was curious to know what he thought about it all. I said: “Reb
Nissan, did you understand what I was talking about?” He looked at me
out of his old eyes under their bushy brows, and answered humbly:
“No, I didn’t. I am an old man, and my hearing isn’t very good. But
this much I know: if what you spoke about wouldn’t be, you wouldn’t
have come here.”

With the years, the areas assigned to me by the local committee
widened out. Mozyr was the first fair-sized town to which I was sent
as an apostle. Mozyr had a large synagogue; it also boasted an intel-
ligentsia. So, from the tiny communities of the marshlands I graduated
to Vilna in the north, to Kiev and even Ediarkov, with their large stu-
dent bodies, in the south.

Here the missionary work was of a very different order. I no longer
had just the folk to deal with. Among the Russian- Jewish assimilating
intelligentsia, and among many of the students, there was an ideological
opposition to Zionism which had to be countered on another level.
T^ese were not the rich, orthodox Jewish families of Pinsk, obscurantist.

42

TRIAL AND ERROR

reactionary. They were not, either, the Shtadlonim, the notables, with
their vested interests, their lickspittle attitude toward the Russian Gov-
ernment, their vanity and their ancient prestige. Nor were they like the
German assimilating Jews, bourgeois, or Philistine. For these last strove,
in their assimilationist philosophy, to approximate to the type of the
German Spiesshurger, the comfortable merchant, the Geheimrat, the
professor, the sated, respectable classes. Most of the Russian- Jewish
intelligentsia, and above all the students, assimilated toward the spirit
of a Tolstoi or Korolenko, toward the creative and revolutionary classes.
It was, I think, a tragically erroneous assimilation even so, but it was
not base or repulsive. In Germany we were losing, through assimilation,
the least attractive Jewish groups. The opposite was the case in Russia.

For me, then, it was a time of three-fold growth. I was pursuing my
scientific studies systematically, and to that extent resisting the pressure
of bohemianism in my surroundings. At the same time, within the
Russian Jewish Society, I was working out, in discussion and debate,
my political philosophy, and beginning to shed the vague and sentimental
Zionism of my boyhood. Thirdly, I was learning, one might say from
the ground up, the technique of propaganda and the approach to the
masses. I was also weaving the web of my life’s personal relationships.

CHAPTER 4

The Coming of Herzl

^‘The Jewish State^^ — HerzVs True Historic Role — His Per-
sonality — The First Zionist Congress Called — Max Nordau
— Zionists and Revolutionaries at Berne University — Lenin,
PlekhanoVj Trotsky — Revolution against the Revolutionaries
— Russian Student Zionists and Herzl — HerzVs Diplomacy
— The Democratic Fraction — Western Zionism and Russian
Zionism,

I WAS in my second year in Berlin when, in 1896, Theodor Herzl
published his tract, now a classic of Zionism, Der Judenstaat — The
Jewish State, It was an utterance which came like a bolt from the blue.
We had never heard the name Herzl before; or perhaps it had come
to our attention, only to be lost among those of other journalists and
feuilletonists. Fundamentally, The Jewish State contained not a single
new idea for us; that which so startled the Jewish bourgeoisie, and
called down the resentment and derision of the Western Rabbis, had
long been the substance of our Zionist tradition. We observed, too, that
this man Herzl made no allusion in his little book to his predecessors
in the field, to Moses Hess and Leon Pinsker and Nathan Bimbaum —
the last a Viennese like Herzl, and the creator of the very word by
which the movement is known: Zionism. Apparently Herzl did not
know of the existence of the Chibath Zion; he did not mention Pales-
tine; he ignored the Hebrew language.

Yet the effect produced by The Jewish State was profound. Not the
ideas, but the personality which stood behind them appealed to us. Here
was daring, clarity and energy. The very fact that this Westerner came
to us unencumbered by our own preconceptions had its appeal. We of
the Russian group in Berlin were not alone in our response. The Zionist
student group of Vienna, Kadimah, was perhaps more deeply impressed
than we. There were also, as I have said, strong Zionist groups at the
universities of Montpellier and Paris and elsewhere. It was from these
sources that Herzl drew much of his early support.

We were right in our instinctive appreciation that what had emerged
from the Judenstaat was less a concept than a historic personality. The

43

44

TRIAL AND ERROR

Judenstaat by itself would have been nothing more than a nine days’
wonder. If Herzl had contented himself with the mere publication of
the booklet — ^as he originally intended to do, before it became clear to
him that he was no longer his own master, but the servant of the idea —
his name would be remembered today as one of the oddities of Jewish
history. What has given greatness to his name is Herzl’s role as a man
of action, as the founder of the Zionist Congress, and as an example of
daring and devotion.

I first saw Herzl at the second Congress, in Basle, in the summer of
1898, and though he was impressive, I cannot pretend that I was swept
off my feet. There was a great genuineness about him, and a touch of
pathos. It seemed to me almost from the beginning that he was under-
taking a task of tremendous magnitude without adequate preparation.
He had great gifts and he had connections. But these did not suffice.
As I learned to know him better at succeeding Congresses, my respect
for him was confirmed and deepened. As a personality he was both
powerful and naive. He was powerful in the belief that he had been
called by destiny to this piece of work. He was naive, as we already
suspected from Der Judenstaat, and as we definitely learned from our
contact with his work, in his schematic approach to Zionism.

His Zionism began as a sort of philanthropy, superior of course to
the philanthropy of Baron de Hirsch, but philanthropy nevertheless.
As he saw it, or seemed to see it, there were rich Jews and there were
poor Jews. The rich Jews, who wanted to help the poor Jews, had
considerable influence in the councils of the nations. And then there was
the Sultan of Turkey, who always wanted money, and who was in
possession of Palestine. What was more logical then, than to get
the rich Jews to give the Sultan money to allow the poor Jews to go to
Palestine ?

There were, again, two steps in the process. First, the rich Jews
had to be persuaded to open their purses; second, the Great Powers
had to be persuaded to put some pressure on Turkey and to act as the
guarantors in the transaction. In this connection, the two leading Powers
were Germany and England ; Herzl began by putting the emphasis on
Germany and the Kaiser ; afterward he shifted it to England. The whole
of the Zionist Organization was merely an understructure for Herzl,
whereby he would exert pressure on the rich Jews, and obtain the
authority for his demarches among the Powers.

Young as I was, and totally inexperienced in worldly matters, I con-
sidered the entire approach simpliste and doomed to failure. To begin
with, I had no faith at all in the rich Jews whom Herzl was courting.
Even Baron Edmond de Rothschild, who had done considerable semi-
philanthropic work in Palestine — ^he did a great deal more than that,
later, when he achieved a deeper understanding of Zionism — regarded
Herzl as a naive person, who was completely overshooting the mark.

THE COMING OF HERZL 45

To me Zionism was something organic, which had to, grow like a
plant, had to be watched, watered and nursed, if it was to reach matu-
rity. I did not believe that things could be done in a hurry. The Russian
Zionists had as their slogan a saying of the Jewish sages: "'That which
the intelligence cannot do, time [that is, work, application, worry] will
do.’’ There was no lack of Zionist sentiment in the Russian- Jewish
masses; what they lacked was will, direction, organization, the feeling
of realities. Herzl was an organizer ; he was also an inspiring personality ;
but he was not of the people, and did not grasp the nature of the forces
which it harbored.

He had excessive respect for the Jewish clergy, born not of intimacy
but of distance. He saw something rather occult and mysterious in the
Rabbis, while he knew them and evaluated them as individuals, good,
bad or indifferent. His leaning toward clericalism distressed us, so did
the touch of Byzantinism in his manner. Almost from the outset a kind
of court sprang up about him, of worshipers who pretended to guard
him from too close contact with the mob. I am compelled to say that
certain elements in his bearing invited such an attitude.

I remember (to run a little ahead of my story) a characteristic inci-
dent at one of the early Congresses. The committee which I liked most
to serve on, and of which I was occasionally the chairman, was the
Permanent- AusschusSf a combination resolutions, steering and nominat-
ing committee. On the occasion to which I refer, Herzl had intimated
to us that he wanted us to nominate, as one of the Vice-Presidents of the
Congress, Sir Francis Montefiore, of England, the nephew of the great
Sir Moses Montefiore, who was a legendary name in Jewry because
of his early interest in Palestine and his services to the Jewish people
at large. We did not want Sir Francis as a Vice-President of the Con-
gress. He was a very nice old English gentleman, but rather footling.
He spoke, in and out of season, and in a sepulchral voice, of ‘'mein
seliger Hoheim — "my sainted uncle.” He always wore white gloves at
the Congresses — ^this in the heat of the Swiss summer — because he
had to shake so many hands. Sir Francis was quite a decorative figure,
and he was invariably called on to greet the Congress. We did not
mind him as a showpiece, but we were rather fed up with his sainted
uncle, and we wanted that particular Vice-Presidency to go to some
real personality, like Ussishkin or Tschlenow. When Herzl pressed
his point on me I said, "But Dr. Herzl, that man’s a fool.” To which
Herzl replied, with immense solemnity: offnei mir kdnigliche

Pforten '' — "he opens the portals of royalty to me.” I could not help
grinning at this stately remark, and Herzl turned white. He was full
of Western dignity which did not sit well with our Russian- Jewish real-
ism; and without wanting to, we could not help irritating him. We
were genuinely sorry, but it was an imavoidable clash of temperaments.

Most profound in its effect on the movement was Herzl’s creation of

46 TRIAL AND ERROR

the Zionist Congress. Having failed with the Jewish notables and
philanthropists, he turned to the Jewish masses. He made contact with
the leaders of the Chibaih Zion. David Wolff sohn, who was to be his
successor, came to him. The call for the first demonstration went out in
1897. It was not to be another Kattowitz Conference, a semifurtive,
internal Jewish affair. It was to be a public declaration, an address to
the world, a manifesto of flesh and blood, the Jewish people itself re-
asserting its existence and confronting humanity with its historic
demands.

That was how .we felt about it, and that was what suddenly jolted
us out of our old routine, and out of our daydreams. We resolved, in
the spring of 1897, to devote the summer vacation to the propagation of
the idea of the Congress. I myself was busy for months in the dim
marshlands, persuading the communities to elect their delegates; I also
received a mandate to the Congress from the community of Pinsk, a
mandate which, I remember with warm gratitude, was renewed for
every Zionist Congress that followed; other Zionists of Pinsk had to
stand for election; about mine there was never any doubt. Three men
who were particularly active among the Russian communities were
Ossip Buchmiller, Boris Katzman and Moshe Margulis Kalvarisky.
All three were taking the agricultural course at Montpellier, and all
three settled in Palestine later. For them, and for many others, the
Congress was a far greater inspiration than the contents of the Juden-
staat ; and the truth is that HerzFs contribution to Zionism, apart from
his personal example, was that of form. Conviction, devotion, persist-
ence, tradition — ^all these things we had in ample measure. But we had
no experience in parliamentary organization and action. It was here
that Herzl shone, both by natural aptitude and by years of training as
the correspondent of the Neue Freie Presse in the Chamber of Deputies
in Paris.

Max Nordau, the famous author of Degeneration and The Conven-
tional Lies of Civilization, was the other outstanding leader of early
Western Zionism. Him I also saw for the first time at the second
Congress, in 1898. The passionate devotion of selflessness which com-
manded respect in Herzl was lacking in Nordau, whom we found arti-
ficial, as well as inclined to arrogance. Nordau was, of course, a famous
European figure; but what mattered to us was that he was an ardent
Zionist only during the sessions of the Congresses. During the other
three hundred and fifty odd days of the year we heard only occasionally
of him within the movement ; for then he attended to his business, which
was that of writer. He was not prepared, like Herzl and many others,
to sacrifice his career for Zionism. Of Nordau’s ability there was no
doubt. His address at the first Congress was powerful, and made a
deep impression. For the first time the Jewish problem was presented

THE COMING OF HERZL

47

forcefully before a European forum. True, it was not done in our
fashion; Nordau’s concept of anti-Semitism was different from ours.
But it was a bugle call sounded all over the world, and the world took
note. Then came Nordau^s main address at the second Congress, and
it was a repetition, with variations, of the first. So it went on, from
Congress to Congress, and the thesis lost its originality. It is true that
Nordau's occasional polemics with assimilated Jews had considerable
value for us ; but the fact remained that he did not pull his weight in the
movement. For the movement was not, strictly speaking, his business.
He was a Heldentenor, a prima donna, a great speaker in the classical
style ; spadework was not in his line.

The cleavage between East and West, between organic and schematic
Zionism, was clarified in Nordau's development as a Zionist. In later
years, after the First World War, he became the father of what is
known as the Max Nordau Plan, if plan it can be called, which pro-
posed the transfer of a million Jews to Palestine in one year, and the
solution of the Jewish problem within a space of ten years. How this
was to be done, and whether the Jews were prepared for such an im-
mense dislocation, and whether Palestine could take them — ^all these
questions were ignored. It was assumed that even if, of the million
suddenly transplanted Jews, two or three hundred thousand perished,
the remaining seven or eight hundred thousand would ''somehow” be
established. One hardly knows how to characterize the whole proposal,
which was taken seriously by a number of Jews, and which afterward
became part of the credo of the Revisionist Zionists.

I could not get away from the impression that Nordati’s attitude
toward the "East-European” Jews was a patronizing one. His tone was
supercilious. His talk sparkled with epigrams, but it betrayed no depth
of feeling and perception. His Zionism was facile. There was latent in
it from the beginning the irresponsibility of the Nordau Plan. It was
easy for Nordau to believe in the possibility of a tremendous and mirac-
ulous leap forward in Zionist work; for me there was never a royal
road, a shortcut — I shall have occasion to refer again and again, through-
out this narrative, to my struggle against this false concept. Moreover,
I held that Zionist progress could be directed only through Palestine,
through tedious labor, every step won by sweat and blood. Nordau
thought the movement could be directed from Paris — ^with speeches.

Nordau was no more successful than Herzl in winning over the
notables and great philanthropists. While I was still teaching at Geneva
— I am again anticipating — deputation of Russian Zionists was or-
ganized to call on Baron Edmond de Rothschild, to discuss with him
the need for a reform in the administration of his colonies. Achad Ha-am,
Ussishkin, Tschlenow, Kohan-Bemstein (the last was a Herzlian
Zionist) made up the deputation. In Paris they co-opted Nordau as

48 TRIAL AND ERROR

their spokesman. I came up from Geneva to meet the deputation, and
sat with it through a preliminary conference. I did not attend the inter-
view with the Baron, but obtained an immediate firsthand report.

Nordau put the deputation’s case before the Baron, whose reply was
short and simple: “These are my colonies, and I shall do what I like
with them !” In those days Baron Edmond distrusted both the old
Zionists and the new. He looked upon Herzl and Nordau as impractical
agitators, on us as schlimihls. His attitude wa^ a great shock to us ;
still, we did not break with him. After all, he was buying land in Palestine
and settling Jews on it, and that was so much to the good. He was rich,
autocratic and misguided, but he was animated by a fine and noble spirit.
There was the hope that in time he would change and this hope was
finally vindicated.

In spite of my mandate from the Zionists of Pinsk I failed to attend
the first Zionist Congress. I have always regretted it, not because it
mattered much in the total, but because it is a gap in the record. That
particular year things were not going well at home and I was painfully
aware of the call tliat my education was making on the family resources.
It happened that toward the end of my fourth term at Berlin I had made
a little discovery in dyestuff chemistry, and ray professor. Von Knorre

^he was another teacher whom I remember with special gratitude —

thought I might be able to sell it. He recommended me to a friend of
his, one Ilyinsky, the manager of a dyeing plant in Moscow. The prospect
of making some money, and relieving the strain on my father s budget,
was a tempting one. But when I returned home for the sumrner vacation
I threw myself into Zionist work, and kept putting off the visit to Mos-
cow; and I did not accept Ilyinsky’s invitation until the late summer.

Going to Moscow was not a simple business. I had no right to travel
outside the Pale without a special permit, which I could not get. In
Moscow I would not be able to register at a hotel; and anyone who put
me up privately without reporting me to the police would himself be
liable to arrest. So I had to make my arrangements carefully in advance.
I found it necessary to stay in Moscow two days. The first night I slept
at Ilyinsky’s place, the second at Naiditch’s. Naiditch had left Pinsk,
and was already established as a successful merchant in Moscow, though
he still continued, rather furtively, to contribute poetry to the Hebrew
journals. I did not sell my chemical discovery; but for other reasons my
stay in Moscow was a rather hateful experience. I loathed the necessity
of dodging the poHce, and my loathing was transferred to the place. I
did not see Moscow — I only caught a glimpse of the Kremlin from a
distance; and I fled as soon as my business was transacted. Years later
I sold the formula to a firm in Paris, while I was on a visit to the Zionist
students of the Sorbonne. I remember that it brought me about six
thousand francs, an enormous sum for me in those days.

THE COMING OF HERZL

49

The extra day’s stay in Moscow made me late for the Congress. But
I rushed from Moscow to Brest Litovsk, where my father was waiting
for me. He had brought along my renewed foreign passport — and ten
rubles. That was all he could give me toward the expenses of my trip
to Basle. I could have managed somehow, but I could not take the
money from him. My lateness for the Congress, my disappointment in
Moscow, and my father’s financial condition, all took the heart out of
me. I had the doleful satisfaction of learning, when I returned to Berlin
in the fall, that I had been missed at the Congress. Delegates from the
communities I had visited and students from various universities had
asked after me. My work in the movement was beginning to be known.

However, as I have already told, I did attend the second Zionist
Congress, in Basle, a year later. My part in the deliberations was quite
insignificant, but I followed the proceedings with profound respect —
though I did not fail to make some mental reservations as to some of
the methods and part of the machinery of the Congress. It was for me
a time of undiluted joy and spiritual happiness; in these surroundings
I felt at home, I felt welcome, and I felt myself to be needed. The
people were congenial, and many of the older delegates were already
experienced veterans in the movement. The inspiration generated at the
Congress served as a powerful impetus for our work. We carried the
message back to every corner of our vast ghetto, bringing a little light
into the drab life of the Jewish communities.

The Zionist Congresses, at first annual and then biennial, became
the tribune and the focus of the movement. The absorption of the old
Zionist movement into the new, the story of the transfer of power,
cannot be given here in detail ; but it was Herzl’s enduring contribution
to Zionism to have created one central, parliamentary authority for
Zionism. Against the just criticisms which must be leveled at his leader-
ship, this cardinal achievement must not be forgotten ; and the criticisms
cannot be understood except against the background of the world — or
rather the worlds — in which I grew up and reached maturity.

If Russian Jewry was the cradle of my Zionism, the Western uni-
versities were my finishing schools. The first of these schools was
Berlin, with its Russian- Jewish society; the second was Berne, the
third Geneva, both in Switzerland. The second and third may be lumped
together ; and they differed radically from the first.

I finished my third year in Berlin; for the fourth — in 1898 — I went
to Freiburg to take my doctorate. My favorite professor, Bistrzcyki,
a distinguished German chemist, of Polish origin, had moved from
Berlin to Freiburg, and I followed him. There were very few Jewish
students at Freiburg; but in the neighboring university town of Berne
— ^three-quarters of an hour away — ^there was a very large Russian-
Jewish student colony, and here conditions were not at all like those

50

TRIAL AND ERROR

which I had left behind me. Switzerland — and this meant chiefly Berne
and Geneva — ^was, at the turn of the century, the crossroads of Europe’s
revolutionary forces. Lenin and Plekhanov made it their center. Trotzky,
who was some years younger than I, was often there. The Jewish stu-
dents were swayed — it might be better to say overawed — ^by the intel-
lectual and moral authority of the older revolutionaries, with whose
names was already associated the glamor of Siberian records. Against
them the tiny handful of Zionist students could make no headway, hav-
ing no authority of comparable standing to oppose them.

Actually the fight was not of our choosing; it was thrust upon us.
Our sympathies were with the revolutionaries; they, however, would
not tolerate in the Jewish youth any expression of separate attachment
to the Jewish people, or even special awareness of the Jewish problem.
Yet the Jewish youth was not essentially assimilationist ; its bonds with
its people were genuine and strong; it was only by doing violence to
their inclinations and upbringing that these young men and women had
turned their backs, at the bidding of the revolutionary leaders, on the
peculiar bitterness of the Jewish lot. My resentment of Lenin and Plek-
hanov and the arrogant Trotzky was provoked by the contempt with
which they treated any Jew who was moved by the fate of his people
and animated by a love of its history and its tradition. They could not
understand why a Russian Jew should want to be anything but a
Russian. They stamped as unworthy, as intellectually backward, as
chauvinistic and immoral, the desire of any Jew to occupy himself with
the sufferings and destiny of Jewry, A man like Chaim Zhitlovsky, who
was both a revolutionary and a Jewish nationalist, was looked upon with
extreme suspicion. And when the Bund was created — ^the Jewish branch
of the revolutionary movement, national as well as revolutionary in
character — Plekhanov sneered that a Bundist was a Zionist who was
afraid of seasickness. Thus the mass of Russian- Jewish students in
Switzerland had been bullied into an artificial denial of their own per-
sonality ; and they did not recover a sense of balance until the authority
of the ^‘old men” was boldly challenged and in part overthrown by the
dissidents — ^that is, by us.

There were seven of us at first, including myself. Of the others I
remember Chaim Chisin, S. Rappaport, Abram Lichtenstein, Nachman
Syrkin and Zvi Aberson. Chisin and Rappaport were older men. The
first had already lived in Palestine, and had come to Switzerland to
learn medicine and return to Palestine. Rappaport, famous under the
name of Ansky as the author of The Dybbuk, was not a Zionist, but he
rather resented the overbearing attitude of the '^master people,” the
Russians, toward Jewish nationalism. Lichtenstein, who later . married
my sister, and went with her to Palestine, was of my age. Of Nachman
Syrkin I have already told something; he came to us from the Berlin
group ; and of Aberson I shall speak further on.

THE COMING OF HERZL 51

These were the Zionists who issued their challenge to the dominant
group; and it looked like a very uneven contest. We held our first
organizational meeting in the back room of the Russian colony library ;
and we held it standing, for "'the others” had got wind of our projected
meeting and had removed the furniture. But we founded, on our feet, a
Zionist society, the first in Switzerland, under the name of Ha-Schachar,
the Dawn ; and we resolved to carry the fight into the open.

The mere proclamation of our existence created a scandal. The "reac-
tionary bourgeoisie” was on the march! The colony was in a turmoil,
and attempts were made to browbeat us into submission. We refused to
be browbeaten. Instead, we called a mass meeting of the Jewish student
body for the purpose of increasing our membership, and the notices
proclaimed that I was to read a paper and submit a resolution in favor
of the Zionist program.

I cannot help saying that this step called for a certain degree of moral
courage. Lenin was not the world figure which he became later ; but he
already had a name. Plekhanov, an older man, was widely known. We,
on the other hand, were nobodies. So if the founding of Ha-Schachar
was a scandal, this step was revolution. The other side mobilized all its
forces; we, for our part, invited down from Berlin two gifted young
Zionist speakers, Berthold Feivel and Martin Buber. The meeting,
which was held in a Bierhalle, expanded into a sort of congress, and
lasted three nights and two days 1 It was before the dawn of the third
day, at four o’clock, that the resolution was put to a vote, and we scored
a tremendous triumph. A hundred and eighty students enrolled in the
Zionist Society — a striking revelation of the true inclinations and con-
victions of a large part of the Jewish student body.

This was the first real breach in the ranks of the assimilatory revolu-
tionists in Switzerland. I recall that Plekhanov was particularly out-
raged by our success. He came up to me after the close of the meeting
and asked me furiously: "What do you mean by bringing discord into
our ranks?” I answered: "But Monsieur Plekhanov, you are not the
Czar!” There was already, in those days, something significant in the
autocratic spiritual attitude of the revolutionaries.

Seen from this distance, and across a turbulent period of human his-
tory, that incident in a Swiss university may seem to be rather unim-
portant. It had, however, serious repercussions in our young world.
The shock of the Berne rebellion was felt throughout the student body
of the West, and Zionism was strengthened at a dozen different points.
The struggle was on for the possession of the soul of that generation of
young Russian Jews in the West. It must not be forgotten that of the
thousands who were then preparing for a career in the West, a large
proportion returned to Russia. The students who had been won for
Zionism became influential cdls in their home towns. I found them there
later, carriers of the movement in the Jewish communities.

5 ^

TRIAL AND ERROR

Of our battle against the dissolution of young Jewry in the Russian
Revolution I shall speak again; but enough has been told here to indi-
cate one set of reasons for the opposition to Herzl which took shape in
the Democratic Fraction at the early Zionist Congresses. We were not
revolutionaries ; but it would have been even more inaccurate to call us
reactionaries. We were a struggling group of young academicians, with-
out power, and without outside support ; but we had a definite outlook.
We did not like the note of elegance and pseudo-worldliness which
characterized official Zionism, the dress suits and frock coats and fash-
ionable dresses. On me the formalism of the Zionist Congresses made a
painful impression, especially after one of my periodic visits to the
wretched and oppressed Russian Jewish masses. Actually it was all very
modest, but to us it smacked of artificiality, extravagance and the haut
monde ; it did not bespeak for us the democracy, simplicity and earnest-
ness of the movement ; and we were uncomfortable.

Had we been other than we were, we could not have appealed to the
student youth, which was later to constitute the leadership of the Zionist
movement. Herzl had no access to it; he did not speak its language, just
as, both figuratively and literally, he did not speak the language of the
Russian Jewish masses. If the Zionist movement became a factor in the
great student colonies of the West, if it ceased to be a romantic ^^sporF’
and compelled the serious attention of its opponents, it was because the
young protagonists of the idea had found their way to the hearts of the
Russian Jewish student youth.

There were other, related reasons for our opposition. HerzFs pursuit
of great men, of princes and rulers, who were to ''give” us Palestine,
was the pursuit of a mirage. It was accompanied, most unfortunately,
but perhaps inevitably, by a shift of the leadership to the right. Herzl
played to the rich and powerful, to Jewish bankers and financiers, to the
Grand Duke of Baden, to Kaiser Wilhelm II and to the Sultan of
Turkey ; later to the British Foreign Secretary. We, on the other hand,
had little faith in the benevolence of the mighty. It was inevitable that
the leadership should feel uneasy about the Democratic Fraction, and
about the left-wing section of the movement, the Poale Zion, which
formed parallel with the right wing, the Misrachi, or orthodox group.
Official Zionism, as represented by the thoroughly respectable leader-
ship, might have won the tolerance of the Russian authorities. Not so
the young men, with their definitely leftist leanings. We began to repre-
sent a "danger” to the movement. We were the "subversives.”

A third set of reasons came into play. Herzl, as we have seen, relied
on diplomatic activity to get Palestine for the Jews. At the first Con-
gresses, Herzfs political statements, though always vague, did have a
certain freshening and exhilarating effect. It seemed to us for a time
that we had been romantics and dreamers, but that our visions had been

THE COMING OF HERZL

53

little ones. Herzl spoke in large terms, of international recognition, of a
charter for Palestine, of a vast mass migration. But the effect wore off
as the years passed and nothing remained but the phrases. Herzl had
seen the Sultan. He had seen the Kaiser. He had seen the British
Foreign Secretary. He was about to see this or that important man. And
the practical effect was nothing. We could not help becoming skeptical
about these nebulous negotiations.

Side by side with the revolt of the Democratic Fraction there was a
more general revolt on the part of the Russian Zionists against the
Western conception of Zionism, which we felt to be lacking in Jewish-
ness, in warmth and in understanding of the Jewish masses. Herzl did
not know Russian Jewry; neither did the Westerners who joined him —
Max Nordau, Alexander Marmorek, the distinguished physician, Leo-
pold Greenberg, the editor of the London Jewish Chronicle, and others.
Herzl was quick to learn — ^not so the others. They did not believe that
Russian Jewry was capable of furnishing leaders to the movement.
Herzl, however, wrote, immediately after the first Congress :

And then . . . there rose before our eyes a Russian Jewry the strength
of which we had not even suspected. Seventy of our delegates came
from Russia, and it was patent to all of us that they represented the
views and sentiments of the five million Jews of that country. And
what a humiliation for us, who had taken our superiority for granted !
All these professors, doctors, lawyers, industrialists, engineers and
merchants stand on an educational level which is certainly no lower
than ours. Nearly all of them are masters of two or three languages,
and that they are men of ability in their particular lines is proved by
the simple fact that they have succeeded in a land where success is
peculiarly difficult for the Jews.

But Herzl discovered more. Of the Russian Jews, he said:

They possess that inner unity which has disappeared from among
the westerners. They are steeped in Jewish national sentiment, though
without betraying any national narrowness and intolerance. They are
not tortured by the idea of assimilation, their essential being is simple
and unshattered. They do not assimilate into other nations, but they
exert themselves to learn the best that there is in other peoples. In
this wise they manage to remain erect and genuine. And yet they are
ghetto Jews ! The only ghetto Jews of our time! Looking on them, we
understood where our forefathers got the strength to endure through
the bitterest times.

Yet, with all this intuitive perception, this generosity of understand-
ing, Herzl could not remake his own approach to Zionism. How much
less possible was this for the smaller men who surrounded him! The
Zionism of the Westerners was to us a mechanical and so to speak
sociological concept, based on an abstract idea, without roots in the

54

TRIAL AND ERROR

traditions and emotions of the Jewish people. Excluded as we were
from the leadership of the movement, we were expected to regard our-
selves merely as its beneficiaries, and not, as we felt ourselves to be, the
true source of its strength. We, the unhappy Jews of Russia, were to
be sent to Palestine, by them, the emancipated Westerners. And if
Palestine was not available, well — some other territory would have to
be found.

We were vindicated in our attitude toward the Western leaders when,
at a crucial moment in Zionist history — ^following the Kishinev pogrom —
Herzl attempted to substitute Uganda for Palestine, as a temporary
palliative measure, he urged, failing to perceive that, with all their
sufferings, the Jews of Russia were incapable of transferring their
dreams and longings from the land of their forefathers to any other
territory. It was thus made manifest that Palestine had, in fact, never
been '‘available’’ to the Western leadership. It had been a mirage, and
when the mirage faded, Uganda — ^which as a matter of fact was even
more of a mirage — ^was proposed in its place. The fact that the heart of
Jewry was fixed, by every bond of affection and tradition, on Palestine,
seemed beyond the understanding of the Westerners. The enormous
practical significance of this fixation, its unique and quite irreplaceable
power to awaken the energies of the Jewish people, escaped them.

We liked and admired Herzl, and knew that he was a force in Israel.
But we opposed him within the movement because we felt that the
Jewish masses needed something more than high diplomatic representa-
tives, that it was not good enough to have two or three men traveling
about interviewing the great of the world on our behalf. We were the
spokesmen of the Russian-Jewish masses who sought in Zionism self-
expression and not merely rescue. We must follow the example of the
Bilu though on a far larger scale ; this alone would encourage our youth,
would release the forces latent in our people, would create real values.
To Herzl all this was rather alien at first. But now that I have come to
know and understand the Viennese milieu in which he grew up — so
remote from all the troubles and vicissitudes of our life — and especially
when I compare him with other Jewish Viennese intellectuals, of his
time or a little later (Schnitzler, Von Hofmannsthal, Stefan Zweig — all
men of talent), I am amazed at Herzl’s greatness, at the profundity of
his intuition, which enabled him to understand as much of our world as
he did. He was the first — ^without a rival — ^among the Western leaders,
but even he could not break the mold of his life. Within the limitations
of that mold, and with his magnificent gifts and his complete devotion,
he rendered incalculable service to the cause. He remains the classical
figure in Zionism.

CHAPTER 5

Geneva Years

I Graduate, Begin to Teach, and Sell My First Patent — Tug
of War between Chemistry and Zionism — Crisis in East-Euro-
pean Jewry and in Zionism — The Fourth Zionist Congress —
Zionist Figures — Menachem Mendel Ussishkin — Yechiel Tschle-
now — Leo Motzkin — Shmarya Levin — Vladimir Jabotinsky
— Martin Buber — Berthold Feivel — Ansky — Zvi Aherson, the
Luftmensch — The Spirittuil Dilemma oj the Zionist Youth —
The Birth of the Idea of the Hebrew University — I Meet My
Future Wife — Vera Chatzman and Her Circle — A Glimpse
into the Future,

TThE deep division of my life, or perhaps I should say its organic
duality, manifested itself completely in the four years I spent in Geneva.
Already in Berlin I had been aware of the double pull, toward science
on the one hand, toward a public life in the Zionist movement on the
other. There I had maintained the balance between the two forces; I
still maintained it in Freiburg, while I was taking my doctorate. In
Geneva the balance was disturbed, my scientific work suffered. Later
on I emphasized my chemistry again, for a short period ; and then again,
in much later years, I abandoned it wholly for long periods.

My doctorate thesis was based on the dyestuff researches I had
started in Berlin, and on the discovery which I had tried unsuccessfully
to sell in Moscow. I managed to obtain with my doctorate the coveted
top rating of summa cum laude, and the autumn following my graduation
I was appointed Privat Dozent in chemistry at the University of Geneva.
The nearest equivalent to this post in an English university is that of
assistant reader ; in an American it is, I think, that of lecturer. There is
one important difference. The Privat Dozent received no fixed salary.
He was paid by the pupil, at about fifty marks per term. The average
enrollment gave the Privat Dozent something less than a very modest
livelihood. But of course the title carried with it a certain distinction.
It was the beginning of an academic career. It afforded opportunity for
study and research. The next step was an assistant professorship, and
after that came a full professorship. So, with all its poor pay, the post of
Privat Dozent was much coveted.

55

56 TRIAL AND ERROR

I do not know how long I would have been able to retain the lecture-
ship if it had not been for a great stroke of luck almost at the beginning.
I was able to sell a patent to the I. G. Farbenindustrie of Germany, and
this provided me at once with a regular income of six hundred marks a
month. That was a tremendous experience for me, I had become inde-
pendent! What was more, I had achieved independence by my own
efforts, and in my own field as chemist.

As to the actual contact with that gigantic enterprise, the I. G.
Farbenindustrie, I paid little attention to it. Hardly anyone thought of
it then as the focus of German military might and of German dreams
of world conquest. But it gives me a queer feeling to remember that
I, too, like many another innocent foreign chemist, contributed my
little to the power of that sinister instrument of German ambition. A
little later I sold my earlier discovery to a Paris firm, and this windfall
enabled me to repay my father some of the outlay on my education. I
was quite startled by my initial success. I saw myself set up for life.

I saw myself freed from all financial worries, and able to devote myself
to my favorite pursuits. Actually, my income from the patent lasted four
years, and then declined to zero. And the temporary liberation from the ,
economic struggle was in the long run not as beneficial as it might have
been. For though I continued in my scientific work, it was not with the
concentration that I should have given it. I could have done a great deal
more if I had not devoted by far the larger part of my time to Zionist
activities.

It is easy to say that from the personal point of view this was a serious
mistake; but I do not know if that is the right word for it. The tug of
war between my scientific inclinations and my absorption in the Zionist
movement has lasted throughout my life. There has never been a time
when I could feel justified in withdrawing, except temporarily — ^and even
then in a sort of strategic retreat only — ^from the Jewish political field.
Always it seemed that there was a crisis, and always my conscience
forbade me to devote more than a part of my time — ^usually the smaller —
to my personal ambitions. The story of my life will show how, in the
end, my scientific labors and my Zionist interests ultimately coalesced,
and became supplementary aspects of a ^ngle purpose. It was not yet so
in Geneva; at least, it did not seem to be so, and during the 1900 to
1904 period I suffered much because of the seeming division of my
impulses.

It was not only a time of crisis in Jewry; it was also — and this con-
tinued for years — a time of crisis in the Zionist movement. I shall have
a great deal to say about the evolution of the organization, about the
internal stresses, about the false starts. Here I want to mention one of
the Zionist Congresses — ^the fourth — ^that of 1900, held in London. Herzl
had chosen London, rather than the Continent, for purposes of demon-

GENEVA YEARS

57

stration. He was interested more in the impression he might produce
on English publicists and statesmen than in the internal strength of
the movement. The speeches, or set platform pieces, were very fine
indeed, and Nordau acquitted himself with the usual eclat. But the effect
was spoiled by something beyond HerzFs, or anyone else's, control. At
that time a great migration of Jews — ^practically an expulsion — ^had been
set in motion by the Rumanian Government; and thousands of the
wanderers were stranded in London. They staged a demonstration, at
the doors of the Congress, which effectively undid any impression of
strength that Herzl sought to produce. At one moment the delegates,
who were assembled for the founding of a Jewish State, had to listen
to a heart-rending appeal from Nordau for an impromptu collection in
behalf of the migrants beleaguering the Congress. We all gave something,
of course; but the contrast between the grandiose talk of a Jewish State
and the pitiful eleemosynary gesture for the stranded wanderers was
utterly disheartening. Moreover, in sheer honesty, I was forced to
challenge the official report on the growth of the Zionist movement
in Russia and to show, by cold analysis, that our progress was nothing
like what the report would have it appear. I was forced to state, also,
that the striving after external effect was leading to neglect of internal
construction.

An incident of a personal nature added, for me, to the depressing
effect of that Congress. One of my uncles, Berel, a sweet, gentle soul,
was on his way to America, to join his children. There was no room
for him in Russia. Once he had made a living in the villages, contracting
for the delivery of hay and other fodder. Since the ukase driving the
Jews from the villages, he had been lost. His children had established
themselves in America — ^he was following them. I set out for the London
Congress direct from Pinsk, and since I was in the eyes of my family
a world traveler, I took uncle Berel along with me as far as London,
where he was to catch the boat. As I myself knew nothing about London,
and spoke no English, it was a case of the halt leading the blind. How-
ever, I managed to get him down to the docks, and proceeded to the
sessions. A few hours later he turned up at the hall, in tears. The poor
man had lost his prayershawl and phylacteries and his small store of
kosher food. He could not cross the Atlantic without them! I went
with him to Victoria Station, the point of our arrival in London, and
spent half a day looking for the basket with the precious comestibles
and the appurtenances of Jewish orthodox prayer. We managed to get
back to the boat in time, but those wretched few hours impressed me
profoundly with the misery of the wanderers and the futility of the
Congress.

I should mention, in connection with the history of our movement,
that the London Congress was actually of some historic importance;

TRIAL AND ERROR

58

but not as a demonstration. It was there that the Jewish National Fund,
for the purchase of land in Palestine as the inalienable property of the
Jewish people, was founded; founded in a very small way indeed, and
as it were incidentally. It was destined to become one of our most
important instruments in the building of the homeland, but its birth
was obscure, and the attention paid to it was completely overshadowed
by big talk of charters and international negotiations.

I went back to Geneva depressed, and more committed than ever to
Zionist work. Geneva, too, was not exactly the place for withdrawal
from the world's problems. The restlessness of Europe came to sharpest
expression in the city of political refuge. At the Cafe Landolt, for
example, expatriate students of many nationalities, either minorities
suffering under foreign rule, or majorities suffering under native
tyrannies, assembled daily and talked far into the night at their separate
tables. The Zionists, too, the representatives of the classic oppressed
minority, had their Stamtisch. Zionism was not yet a force, but it was
no longer the queer, hole-in-the-corner movement it had been two or
three years before. We were at least on the agenda of the political
discussions.

The pressure toward participation in public life did not proceed
entirely from the negative forces I have mentioned. I was attracted to
it by the presence of the many strong personalities in the Zionist move-
ment. I do not mean the '"great names"; I mean, much more, intrin-
sically interesting men and women who, giving themselves up as they
did to political issues, would have made my abstention all the more
difficult. Not all of them have left their impress in the history of Zionism,
but I remember them for their intrinsic individuality and attractiveness.

In the front rank of those whom the movement will remember stood
Menachem Mendel Ussishkin, the practical leader of Russian Zionism,
as Achad Ha-am was its spiritual leader. He was a powerful personality,
eloquent, clear, logical and businesslike. He had exceptional executive
ability, and carried on persistently and ably tmder difficult circumstances
— among which was the illegality of the movement in Russia. He created
Zionist cells in every important Jewish center in his "district" and
was able to attract and inspire men of ability and character. Although
he was a typical Choveve Zion, having been a member of Achad Ha-am's
training group, the Bnai Moshe, and although he understood the short-
comings of Herzl's approach to the movement, he remained loyal to
the latter as the central figure and mainstay of the Zionist Organization.
It was only when Herzl brought up the Uganda proposal that his loyalty
was stretched beyond the breaking point, and he prepared to lead a
revolt against the leadership.

Ussishkin was a man of great energy, vast obstinacy and solid

GENEVA YEARS

59

common sense. Perhaps his common sense was a little too solid. He had
in him a strain of the autocrat, and was rather intolerant of younger
people. Of the two academic centers of Zionism in the West, Berlin
and Geneva, headed by Motzkin and myself respectively, he thought
little; he called them: “The hot-air factories.’’

Conservative by nature, he disagreed with Herzl’s grand diplomatic
maneuvers, but believed that we would get much further by haggling
with the Turks direct. In his bearing Ussishkin suggested a mixture
of a Turkish pasha and a Russian governor general. But all his faults
were outweighed by his sterling devotion to the cause. Nothing mattered
to him but Zionism. He had the virtue of his defects, being utterly
inflexible in his honesty and straightforwardness. His life harmonized
with his character; so did his appearance. His skull was round and
massive ; you felt that he could break through a brick wall with it. His
life was successful, clean, single-tracked, and in the finest Jewish
tradition. He had the advantage of economic security — ^though that
perhaps gives all the more point to his self-dedication to Zionism. His
house was that of a Jewish patriarchal family. There was a joke current
about Ussishkin, that whenever his wife was expecting a child, he
would bang the table and say sternly : “A boy ! It’s got to be a boy !”
In this matter he had his way half the time, for his wife gave birth
to one son and one daughter.

I got on well with Ussishkin, respecting his defects not less than
his virtues. His egotism was impressive. He made people feel that they
owed it to him to obey his orders. He was solid, bourgeois, even
Philistine — ^and utterly dependable. Much was forgiven him because
of his genuineness.

The flrst flaw in our relations appeared only in later years when he
came to England during the First World War. He had had a bad time
of it. Driven from Odessa, he had taken refuge in Istanbul. Thence he
made his way circuitously to London, where he arrived in 1918. Some-
how he managed to save part of his money from the Revolution. His
Zionism was as deep rooted as ever. This was after the Balfour
Declaration, and Ussishkin arrived in London with the notion that
a Jewish government was about to be established in Palestine. He had
already drawn up a list of the cabinet members. When I explained to
him tfet we were very far indeed from the necessity of setting up a
Jewish cabinet in Palestine, he was deeply disappointed.

Intelligent and practical though he was, he sometimes betrayed these
streaks of disconcerting naivete. He was not only disappointed that we
were not yet ready to form a Jewish cabinet for Palestine, but rather
puzzled by the fact that the Allies should have won the war. He had
been convinced that Germany was going to be the victor, for, like a
great many Russians, non- J wish as well as Jewish, be had been tre-

6o

TRIAL AND ERROR

mendously impressed by the German mind and by German achievement.
For him Germany was the epitome of Western civilization. He had
not known, till he came to England, of a West beyond the Spree. And
when he did get to know England it was under circumstances inaus-
picious for himself. In the old days — ^that is, before the World War and
the Russian Revolution — ^he had lived in Odessa, and from that city he
had directed the affairs of the southern Zionist district. From that same
vantage point he had looked southward across the Black Sea toward
Palestine, then in the hands of the barbarian Turk; and he had felt
himself to be, by comparison, the European, the Westerner. But when
England took Palestine it was he who was reduced to the status of
barbarian, and it was as such, obscure, unheralded, that he arrived
in London, and in a country whose ways and methods were strange
to him. Besides, he had known me as a youngster at the first Congresses,
and here I was, ensconced in the British capital, a '^native.’’ At times,
when he was dealing in futures, he would give himself away with an
innocent remark like: ''You know, you ought to stay in Europe, I will
conduct Palestine's affairs." It was a bit uncomfortable, but he was
too much the Zionist, too deeply involved in the movement, to command
anything but respect.

Not cast in the same large mold, but still of considerable stature,
was Yechiel Tschlenow, another of the Russian leaders at the early
Congresses. He too was under the influence of Achad Ha-am, and had
belonged to the Bnai Moshe organization — Achad Ha-am’s training
school of Zionists. By profession he was a physician, and ranked high
in his profession. There was something of the Russian about Tschlenow;
he was slow, ponderous, excessively earnest, faithful and persistent.
Like Ussishkin he was thrown out of his accustomed orbit by the
Russian Revolution; but unlike Ussishkin he did not live long enough
to remold his life in the Jewish homeland. He died toward the end of
the First World War.

I have already spoken of the sacrifice, both in personal prospects and
effectiveness of service, which was entailed by premature absorption
in public life and consequent neglect of proper training. An outstanding
instance was Leo Motzkin, a fellow-founder, with me, of the Zionist
Democratic Fraction. Motzkin was a gifted mathematician, whose
abilities had attracted the attention of Professor Mandelstamm, of Kiev.
Motzkin was sent to Berlin by the older man, who expected him to
make a brilliant academic career. Nothing like that happened. Motzkin
w^as an ardent Zionist, but with no sense of proportion in the distribu-
tion of his energies. He could have rendered much greater service to
the movement in the long run if he had not let his public activity eat
into his education. He became, almost from the first day, a Vereins-
Meier, a Johnny Joiner, frittering away his days and nights in innu-

GENEVA YEARS 6i

merable little student gatherings, and taking with tremendous seriousness
every minor incident in student political life.

It is impossible to say how far Motzkin would have gone if he had
given his great gift half a chance ; but that he was a man of high ability
was always clear. He became what we used to call a ^‘Privat-Gelehrter’^
a man who was muddling through his education in private. It hurt him
in his Zionist work, for he never achieved complete independence. He
was too fine a person to join the group of ‘'courtiers’’ who made a body-
guard around Herzl. He was in the opposition. But Herzl recognized
Motzkin’s qualities, and tried to win him over. He sent him, between
the first and second Congresses, to Palestine, and at the second Congress,
Motzkin delivered an excellent report on the state of the colonies. It
placed him under a certain obligation to Herzl ; and though he remained
part of His Majesty’s Opposition, there was a little too much emphasis
on “Majesty’s,” not enough on “Opposition.”

The first place among the propagandists and leaders was occupied —
practically without a rival — ^by Shmarya Levin, who in later years
educated an American generation of Jews in Zionism. I had not met
him in Berlin, where he had been a prominent member of the
Rikssisch Verein, for he had already left for Ko^nigs-

berg. I met him at the early Congresses, beginning with the second or
third. He was an extraordinarily gifted orator, of the intellectual rather
than the emotional type. His speeches coruscated with brilliant phrases,
Biblical and Talmudic quotations and penetrating analyses. Primarily
a teacher rather than a politician, he was a man of the lobbies and of
coteries, and took small part in the proceedings of the Congresses.
Usually he would be seen in the midst of a group of cronies, whom he
was entertaining with his biting characterizations of his opponents.
If he was told: “Dr. Levin, a vote is being taken, you are wanted in
the Plenum,” he would answer, “Wait, I must finish this game of chess.”

Chess was an obsession with him; a ruination, almost, according to
his own account in his remarkable three-volume autobiography. He had
no patience for detailed political action. Besides, he was, despite his
savage wit, utterly innocent in worldly matters, and this was his charm.
Outspoken, spontaneous, he made friends and enemies as he went along,
without an eye either to personal consequences or the practical results
for the movement. Nevertheless, on important issues he was instinc-
tively in the right, and effectively so. In this he was like the great
sailors of the Middle Ages who knew no navigational science, but by
a combination of instinct and experience evaded the dangers of the sea.

He was both teacher and artist, with the skill of the first and the
temperamental quirks of the second. I could always provoke him into
a rage by asking, innocently; “Shmarya, are you making a speech

62

TRIAL AND ERROR

tonight?” He would answer hotly: '"I don't make speeches, I give
lectures.” The word ''Vortrag'' has weight and importance; Shmarya
was a lecturer, not just a speaker. But he was quite justified in making
the distinction. Another trait of his which I remember well was his
aversion to having in his audience anyone to whom he had already
expounded the idea contained in his lecture. If I happened to be in
town when he was lecturing, and threatened to come to hear him, he
would offer me twenty marks to stay away.

Some of his retorts have become classics in the movement. On one
of his visits to America, Shmarya had to listen, at a committee meeting,
to a little speech by the anti-Zionist American Jewish philanthropist
Jacob Schiff, in which the latter observed pompously, and in a heavy
German accent: ‘T am divided into three parts; I am an American,
I am a German, and I am a Jew.” Shmarya rose immediately afterwards
and wanted to know how Mr. Schiff divided himself ; was it horizontally
or vertically? And if horizontally, exactly which part had he left for
the Jewish people? On the occasion of the language struggle around
our technical school in Haifa Shmarya carried on a bitter fight against
Paul Nathan, the director of the German Hiljsverein, the Jewish
philanthropic organization, also an anti-Zionist and a 200 per-cent
German patriot, who demanded that the language of tuition in our
new institute in Palestine should be German, while we would hear of
nothing but Hebrew. Shmarya made deadly use of the parable with
which the Prophet Nathan struck down the guilty King David for his
crime against Uriah the Hittite. For Germany, said Shmarya, had all
the schools and universities she could use, and the Jews of Palestine
had but their one Technikumy the poor man's little ewe lamb, like
Uriah's one possession, Bathsheba, whom David coveted. And rich
Germany was prepared to rob poor Palestine of its sole possession. But
this time it was Nathan who was on the side of the robber instead, as
of old, on the side of the robbed.

The best of his speeches — or lectures — ^were filled with similar
ingenious applications of Bible themes to contemporaneous problems.
Shmarya was often called the great Maggid, or preacher, but he was
more. He was gifted as a writer, too, as he showed in his occasional
articles, and made evident beyond a doubt in his masterly autobiography.
He was a good scholar, and wrote excellent Hebrew as well as Yiddish.
Achad Ha-am properly criticized him for his lack of application. His
great handicap was his natural ability, which encouraged him in habits
of indolence. It was too easy for him to rise to the occasion unprepared.

An older generation of American Jews remembers Shmarya as the
great teacher and dazzling personality. I remember him as the sterling
collaborator and warmhearted friend. We made many trips to America
together, so that he and America were inextricably bound up in my

GENEVA YEARS 63

mind. When, after his death, I had to visit that a>untry alone, I felt
orphaned.

One more ^'youngster” of those days I must mention, the youngest of
us all, Vladimir Jabotinsky. My contacts with him at the early Con-
gresses were few and fleeting, but his part in the movement, and there-
fore in my life, assumed considerable proportions in later years. He
came to us from Odessa as the boy wonder. In his early twenties he had
already achieved a wide reputation as a Russian journalist, writing
under the name of Altalina, and had attracted the attention of men like
Maxim Gorki and the aged Leo Tolstoi. He, too, was a gifted orator,
and became master of some half-dozen languages. But he is remembered
as one of the founders of the Jewish Legion in the First World War, and
as the founder of the Revisionist party, and of the so-called New Zionist
Organization.

His speeches at the early Congresses were provocative in tone but
left no very distinct impression, so that one did not know, for instance,
whether he was for Uganda or against, whether he condoned HerzFs
visit to Von Plehve, Russia’s bitterly anti-Semitic Minister of the In-
terior, or condemned it. Some of this indistinctness or confusion may
have been the effect of a certain exterior contradiction ; for Jabotinsky,
the passionate Zionist, was utterly un- Jewish in manner, approach and
deportment. He came from Odessa, Achad Ha-am’s home town, but the
inner life of Jewry had left no trace on him. When I became intimate
with him in later years, I observed at closer hand what seemed to be a
confirmation of this dual streak ; he was rather ugly, immensely attrac-
tive, well spoken, warmhearted, generous, always ready to help a com-
rade in distress; all of these qualities were, however, overlaid with a
certain touch of the rather theatrically chivalresque, a certain queer and
irrelevant knightliness, which was not at all Jewish. I have mentioned
that he came from Achad Ha-am’s town because he was the antithesis of
Achad Ha-am. The latter was pessimistic and supersensitive, always
preaching limitation. Whatever you got was, in his eyes, much — or at
any rate, big enough. Jabotinsky ran to the other extreme, and disliked
Achad Ha-am who, as a- person, did not fit into his scheme of things.
Nordau was much nearer to the spirit of Jabotinsky; it was Nordau’s
plans and slogans that Jabotinsky adopted many years afterward, when
he fought me in the Congress and, failing to win the Congress, left the
Zionist Organization and, like Zangwill, founded his own. It was natural
for Jabotinsky to think that Achad Ha-am had had an injurious influ-
ence on me, and was responsible for what the Revisionists called my
^"^minimal Zionism.”

Martin Buber and Berthold Felvel, inseparable friends, were of the
Geneva colony for a time. Martin Buber is now a professor at the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem ; fifty years ago he was a young aesthete.

64 TRIAL AND ERROR

the son of a rich father, a rather odd and exotic figure in our midst.
In spite of his handsome allowance from home, he was usually in debt ;
for he was a connoisseur of the arts and a collector of expensive items.
We were good friends, though I was often irritated by his stilted talk,
which was full of forced expressions and elaborate similes, without, it
seemed to me, much clarity or great beauty. My own inclinations were
toward simplicity, and what I admired most was the ability to reduce a
statement to its essential elements. Buber was only beginning to develop
the incomparable German style which, many years later, produced his
remarkable translation of the Bible. Berthold Feivel, his friend, who died
in Palestine a few years ago, was also a writer, but natural, simple,
sensitive and realistic. In his case particularly the style was the man;
for Feivel rendered far greater service to Zionism than his more colorful
friend. In a sense, it may be said that Feivel gave to Zionism, losing
himself in it, and Buber took from it, using it as his aesthetic material.

Older than most of us, Ansky — ^author of The Dybbuk — ^was a sort of
universal uncle. The Zionists liked him because of his tender Jewish
understanding and his Jewish stories, for the telling of which he had a
remarkable talent. The revolutionists found in him, despite his disagree-
ments with them, a sympathetic soul. He had no very sharp political
views, and was never really identified with any group.

The vast majority of the students in Berne and Geneva were as poor
as church mice. Some received a tiny remittance from home, and eked
this out with odd jobs, lessons, bookkeeping, translations — ^anything
that came their way. Their survival was an eternal mystery. Queerest
among these students was one to whom I became greatly attached, Zvi
Aberson, of whom I write in part because our friendship remains a
pleasant memory, and in part because he summed up in his person all
the aspects of the Jewish spiritual and economic tragedy.

Aberson was the Luftmensch par excellence, gifted, rootless, aimless,
untrained and well meaning, that type of lost soul which haunted me,
filled me with dread for myself, and served as a terrifying example.
Four years older than I, he was supposedly — ^and of course to some
extent actually — student. His field was ‘‘the humanities,^' the kind of
material — ^history, philosophy, literature, “things-in~generar' — ^which one
can take up, drop, take up again, vague and attractive subjects to which
the bright type of “eternal student" was usually drawn.

Typical, too, was the manner in which I got to know him. Coming
home late one night, I made out a figure lying on the sofa in my living
room. Since friends were in the habit of dropping in and staying the
night, I paid no attention to the sleeper. The next morning the un-
announced visitor had disappeared. On the second night he was there
again, and on the second morning gone again. Later that day I was
introduced to Aberson among a group in the Cafe Landolt. Someone

GENEVA YEARS 65

happened to ask hinij in my presence, ^^Aberson, where have you been
these last two nights?’’ To which he answered, ‘^Oh, I slept in some
Zionist fellow’s home,” and I realized that this was my man.

I liked him from the first. Bohemian, homeless, living from hand to
mouth, a true Bettelstudent, or beggar student, and ugly as a monkey, he
was a wonderful companion, gay, witty, sometimes, however with a
touch of mordant bitterness — a sort of beggar on horseback. Much of
the time, I afterward found out, he was hungry. He had a brilliant mind,
but lacked all sense of application. He was hated by the Russian Marxists
because he understood their philosophy, had its terminology at his
fingertips, met them on their own ground and invariably routed them in
argument. They hissed him, but he compelled their attention. The
Bundists were terrified of him, and this man, who had so little to eat,
was dubbed, with unconscious irony, the Bundistenfresser, the gobbler-
up of Bundists.

A few months after I learned to know him, Aberson, who had been a
Bundist, but had never been able to stomach the Marxism of that time,
definitely went over to Zionism. At the first conference of our Demo-
cratic Fraction he delivered an address which became famous in the
early history of our party. It was a devastating attack on the position of
the Jewish Marxists and the assimilationists. In spite of their equali-
tarian principles, in spite of their quasi-humanistic attitude toward “the
Jewish problem,” the Jewish Marxists, said Aberson, were “the usual
bullying majority,” intolerant of the hunger for national freedom, the
attachment to cultural traditions, which others felt. Liberators of the
world, they repressed with ridicule and the weight of numbers those
whom they called the minority, but who happened to represent the
actual majority of the Jewish people — certainly in Russia; and if they
lacked the oppressive instruments of the Czar, they were not less hostile
than czarism to the inner demands of minority nationalities. And their
doctrinaire brutality was all the more odious because it was turned
against their own people.

At that time Aberson’s point of view amounted to a tremendous
intellectual discovery, for Eduard Bernstein’s socialistic defense of
minority nationalism was hardly known. It needed courage as well as
imagination to apply the term “oppressors” to the Socialist majority.
But Aberson understood the spirit of the revolutionaries from within,
grasped its essential spiritual weakness, and exposed it mercilessly.

We were so elated by the brilliance of Aberson’s attack on the dom-
inant group that we decided to commission him to develop his thesis and
turn it into a book. A wealthy Jew of Baku, Shrirow, happened to be in
town, and we persuaded him to back the enterprise. He placed a sum of
money at our disposal for Aberson’s use, and Aberson went off to Paris,
on the generous stipend of fifty francs a week, to pursue his studies in

66

TRIAL AND ERROR

the Bibliotheque Nationale. That was the last we heard of him for several
months. Then suddenly he turned up in Geneva.

^^Well?” we asked.

^‘IVe been to all the museums and all the libraries/' was Aberson's
happy answer. But he hadn't written a line.

We saw that the arrangement would not work, or, rather that Aber-
son would not work with this arrangement. So we changed it, I said:
'"Now, you've had your fling. I'll take a room for you over mine, and
you'll work here, in Geneva." I hoped that under my watchful eye he
would settle down to his task. The only effect of the new arrangement
was that my collars, trousers, shirts and ties began to disappear. Aber-
son established a sort of commune, to which he contributed nothing —
not even his writing. He read much; he accumulated a library of bor-
rowed books, most of them on civic problems ; but he never wrote his
book. It was in him; he had the ideas,, he had worked them into a
system, but he could not get them down on paper.

He spent most of his time in the Cafe Landolt, and was always to be
found there between four in the afternoon and midnight, talking, as a
rule, to the oppressed nationalities, who came to look on him as their
protector. Whenever he caught sight of me he would call me over, hand
me his bill, and say : '‘You'll have to ransom me."

This man with the sharp analytical mind and the huge fund of
knowledge had fallen, through lack of discipline and consistency, per-
haps through hunger and privation, into complete unproductiveness.
His daily life was one long fever of activity without purpose ; and it was
filled with all the dodges of poverty. Going out for a walk with Zvi was
a highly complicated business. This street, that house, had to be avoided ;
he owed two francs here, three francs there, a laundry bill, a tailor's bill.
One has to think not only of the energy he expended in evading his
creditors, but the ingenuity he displayed in getting fresh credit. Now
and again a windfall would enable him to carry out a cleaning operation
and then the cycle would begin again. OccasionaEy we went on holiday
together, usually during the Easter recess, which was not long enough
to permit my return to Pinsk, We would stay at some cottage in a Swiss
village, perhaps at the other end of the lake ; we cooked our own meals,
and we managed on as little as three or four francs a day. But if Zvi
went alone, as sometimes happened, I would invariably get a telegram
from him at the end of a week or two : Can't move : send me twenty-
five FRANCS.

This was Aberson, the good, quick-witted, warmhearted, luckless
Bettelstudent, with the penetrating mind and the silver tongue. In normal
circumstances he would have gone far ; but the circumstances of his life
were distinctly abnormal ; and though he was one of the extreme cases,
he was illustrative of the dilemma of a whole generation. I, too, was

GENEVA YEARS 67

trapped in it ; I escaped it to some extent, but the experience left a per-
manent mark on my life.

I was to discover that in Berlin and Geneva; to confirm it later in
England ; to recognize it still later as an ineradicable feature of my life —
part of the penalty of my inheritance. We Russian Jews, particularly
those of us who devoted ourselves to the sciences, worked under fright-
ful handicaps. Our primary education in Russia was a poor one. Most of
us were poverty stricken when we came to the Western universities.
It so happens that my own personal experience with hunger and over-
work — I am speaking of the year in Pfungstadt — ^was a brief one ; even
so it affected my health and lowered my vitality. What of those who
never escaped from the condition? Much of their time was wasted on
sheer drudgery, donkeywork, to eke out their means of subsistence ; and
all this in the midst of continuous undernourishment.

But this was not all. Our situation was complicated by the acute moral
problem to which I referred earlier in this chapter. How could we devote
ourselves to careers when conditions in Russia were so bitter? Was it
not cowardly and selfish to pursue one’s academic work in seeming deaf-
ness to the cry of one’s people ? I saw my closest friends, Leo Motzkin,
Berthold Feivel, Shmarya Levin, Nachman Syrkin and others, the best
and ablest, neglecting their university work. They plunged early into
the Zionist movement, oscillating queerly between two incongruous roles,
that of the important public man and that of the bohemian student.
They were not alone. Thousands of able yoimg men and women were
studying in Western universities ; remarkably few of them ever became
anything in science, art and literature. The dissipation of their energies,
the drain on their nervous and even physical resources, made it impos-
sible for them to concentrate on their studies. At best they managed to
get their college diplomas, that is, their doctorates; and that was the
end of it. They made no attempt at postgraduate work.

All this I saw and was part of ; and it haunted me. I fought against it,
but by no means with complete success. I still find myself under the
necessity of filling out lacunae in my education which should have been
taken care of forty and fifty years ago. And I look with envy on young
colleagues whose scientific education is so much sounder than mine.

Of course there is the other side of the picture. During those years,
1895 to 1904, and particularly during the last four years, we laid the
foundations of the Zionist movement among the educated Jewish classes,
and inducted the future leadership of Zionism into its tasks. One may
ask whether the movement would not have been better off in the long
run if we had attended more closely to our personal equipment for the
later struggle, whether it was not false economy to invest in the move-
ment too much of our energy too early. Or one may have to recognize
that the pressure of those times was bound to be too much for us. What

68

TRIAL AND ERROR

remains true is that we did a great deal of Zionist work during the
decade which linked two centuries.

It was in Geneva that we founded the first Zionist publishing house,
Der Judische Verlag, with its periodical, Der Jude, which grouped
about itself a number of men, some of them already well known, others
with their mark still to make, like Feivel and Buber. Yechiel Tschlenow,
pf Moscow, Jacob Lestschinsky, of Geneva, Micha Joseph Berdichevsky,
the Hebrew writer, Abram Ittelson, the editor of the Rassviet in St.
Petersburg, collaborated with us. This was the first cultural literary
enterprise within the Zionist movement ; it was sponsored and activated
by the Democratic Fraction, and it was a spontaneous expression of the
feeling that the diplomatic activities of the Western Zionist leaders were
not enough.

In Geneva, too, the idea of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem was
first given form. It was not a new idea. It had already been discussed
at the first Congress, in 1897. But we organized public opinion about it.
The Hebrew University was also a response to a deep-seated need. The
Russian-Jewish youth was being systematically excluded from the Rus-
sian schools. We felt the pressure in Germany and Switzerland; and
part of the stream of migration was diverted to the south, to Italy. To
us in Geneva it seemed logical to seek at least a partial solution for this
homelessness of the young Jewish intellectual in a Hebrew university in
Palestine. But only part of the impulse flowed from immediate practical
considerations. It was also related to the general cultural program and
spiritual awakening which characterized the younger Zionist group and
particularly the Russians, who had sat at the feet of Achad Ha-am.

We opened an office for the Judische Hochschule, or Jewish Univer-
sity, and carried out a referendum among the Jewish students. The
revolutionary bodies greeted the proposal with derision. The Zionist
youth was for it. But the Western Zionist leaders — Herzl alone ex-
cepted — considered the idea Utopian to the point of childishness. For
them it was always political Zionism first, and practical work nowhere,
until the charter for Palestine was obtained. They went on seeking
important international contacts; they discouraged work in Palestine,
which they considered premature and dangerous because it would antag-
onize Turkey and prejudice the chances of the charter. But we went
ahead in the face of their opposition.

Yet it should be understood that we fought these problems out in-
ternally, on the floor of the Zionist Congresses. For we always recognized
that the Congress had come to stay; we, not less than Herzl, regarded
it as the Jewish State in the making, and whatever our differences with
the ''head of the State,’' we were forever strengthening the "State”
itself, that is, the Zionist Organization and its parliament. It was within
the Zionist Organization that the opposition which Motzkin and I

GENEVA YEARS

69

headed, the Democratic Fraction, sought to strengthen and deepen the
spiritual significance of the movement, and to make the Organization
the reflection of the forces of national Jewry. It took the Uganda inci-
dent — of which more later — ^to bring about a split, and then it was
some of the Westerners, and not we of the East, who actually broke
away, to found a separate organization.

In Switzerland, as in Berlin, the Russian- Jewish student body was
self-contained and more or less isolated, and always for the same reasons ;
we could not afford to maintain social contacts ; and the right of asylum
was based on the tacit but rigid assumption that we foreigners would
not take sides in local politics. Even so, we might have become more
friendly with the Jewish population than we did. I had been a lecturer
in Geneva for nearly three years before I found myself on calling terms
with Geneva Jewry, or, to be more exact, with the Rabbi of Geneva and
a few other Jewish families. One of these was the Flegenheimers, wealthy
and rather kindly people. A son of theirs, Edmond, who shortened his
name to Fleg, lived in Paris, where he achieved some standing as a
writer. The Rabbi, Wertheimer, who had a chair at the local university,
was a sweet, gentle old man.

Perhaps I would never have established even these contacts if it had
not been for certain external causes. The great body of Jewish migrants
from Russia passed through northern Europe, by way of Bremen and
Hamburg, to America, always under the aegis of the German philan-
thropic organization, the Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden. But a trickle
came southward. A few emigrants discovered that any Russian Jew who
got to Basle or Geneva would be helped on southward to Milan, and
thence to Marseille, where, one way or another, he might obtain the fare
to America. I was already known to many Russian Jews as the leader of
the Democratic Fraction at the Zionist Congresses, and the leader of the
Zionist movement among the student youth in Switzerland. It was as-
sumed that I had some local influence. So I was visited at regular inter-
vals by recommended ^‘clients,’’ for whom I intervened with the Swiss-
Jewish community.

A number of Russian Christians who wanted to get to America took
advantage of the general confusion, and posed as Jews 1 One of them I
caught red-handed because, in his innocence of the Jewish religion, he
overdid his piety. He looked Jewish enough, and sported a very Jewish
beard; if his Yiddish was not up to the mark, it was nothing unusual
among certain Russian- Jewish communities outside the Pale. This man,
whose name I have forgotten, was a wheelwright by trade, and to prove
his bona fides he begged me to get him some kind of employment during
his stay in Geneva, on the condition, naturally, that he would not have
to work on the Sabbath. Rabbi Wertheimer sent me to a pious Calvinist,
who, touched by the religious scruples of the emigrant, agreed to em-

70 TRIAL AND ERROR

ploy him on the basis of a five-day week. The Russian must have been
chuckling heartily in his non- Jewish beard until one weekday I ran
across him on the street and asked him if he had lost his job. To this he
replied, quite shocked : ''But don't you know it's the festival of Purim
today? Do you expect me to work on Purim?" To which I, equally
shocked, but for a very different reason, said : "This is the first time Pve
ever heard of Purim as a workless festival." In the ensuing dispute I
became exceedingly suspicious of the religious pretentions of my emi-
grant friend. A little inquiry uncovered the swindle, much to the disgust
of the pietist.

I became acquainted with the Swiss Jews, good-natured, simple,
middle-class people, whom I began to win over to the Zionist movement.
It was the only Zionist work I did outside of academic circles, except at
the Congresses and on my visits home. But by the time I left Switzer-
land in 1904 there were Zionist societies in Berne, Lausanne and Geneva.

Those were full, exciting years of growth, expansion and develop-
ment. All in all they were happy years, in spite of the troubles that
weighed on us, for it is not in the nature of youth to be unhappy for
long stretches at a time ; though, to be sure, I could hardly count myself
as part of the youth by the time my Geneva period was ended. I left
Russia for the West a boy of nineteen ; I left Switzerland for England a
man of thirty. The ways of my life were set; the instruments of my
activities were forged. The Zionist Congresses had refashioned my Zion-
ism on its practical side. I had a clear picture of the forces at work in the
Zionist world. I knew the men and women who represented these forces.
I was not the unsophisticated boy I had been when I left Pinsk. I was
aware of the grimness and difficulty of the task ahead of us.

But Geneva may be said to have completed the pattern of the future
because I established there the most important relationship of my life.
It was in Geneva, in 1900 — ^forty-seven years ago — ^that I first met my
wife, in the company of a small group of Russian- Jewish girls who had
been schoolmates of hers in her native city of Rostov-on-Don. Like so
many others of her generation she had come to study medicine in Geneva
because the schools of her own country were closed to her. But the small
group of young women to which Vera Chatzman belonged differed in a
marked way from the general run of Jewish girl-students in the Swiss
universities of that time. Their looks, their deportment, their outlook on
life, set them apart. They were far more attractive than their contem-
poraries from the Pale of Settlement; they were less absorbed in Russian
revolutionary politics ; not that they were indifferent ; but they paid more
attention to their studies, and less to the public meetings and endless dis-
cussions which took up so much of the time of the average Russian
student abroad. Vera Chatzman was of a particularly quiet and retiring
nature, inclined to be pensive, almost sad — so that she was set apart

GENEVA YEARS 71

even among her companions. I used to call her affectionately '‘princesse
lointainef^

Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, is the gateway to the Caucasus ;
the Jewish community there was small, and though subject to all the dis-
abilities which crippled Jewish life in the Pale, its material condition was
on the whole easier. The district was wealthier, competition was less
keen, and if a family belonged — ^as my wife's did — to the class of so-
called ''guild merchants," they enjoyed special privileges — ^for Jews, that
is — ^and consequently a more comfortable existence. There was, more-
over, little contact with the Jewish masses, who dwelt chiefly in the south-
western provinces of the vast Russian Empire.

All this had its effect on the bearing and manners of the group to
which my future wife belonged, so that its members stood out in con-
trast from the majority of the Russian- Jewish students in Geneva, who
for the most part seemed underfed, stunted, nervous and sometimes
bitter — ^an easy prey to revolutionary propagandists. Student public opin-
ion frowned on these girls, who were so different from the rest ; but they
paid little attention to whatever animosity or envy they aroused, and
pursued their studies systematically, without permitting outside interests
to deflect them.

Vera and I found our way to each other only slowly, partly because
of the difference in our ages — ^about seven years — ^and our status ; I was
a lecturer, she a student — ^but chiefly because of the difference in our
background and our approach to life, both of which meant, to me, Zion-
ism and the Jewish problem. But there was a strong mutual attraction
from the start, and as time went on we reached a tacit agreement that
we must go through life together. We agreed, too, that we would have to
wait with our marriage until Vera had finished her medical studies, and
I could see clearly the road ahead of me.

Our first meetings were not very frequent, for we were both absorbed
in our work, but as often as we met I would try to arouse her interest in
the problems which preoccupied me so deeply. It seemed to me, at first,
that she took things much more calmly than I, and in a sense she did,
but I discovered in time that this was only on the surface. Much depth
of feeling, character and understanding lay hidden beneath the calm
surface; and these were qualities which not only attracted me in them-
selves, but gave me the assurance that I had found in her not only my
future wife, but a helpmeet, comrade and support. The extent to which
this assurance was justified will become evident throughout this nar-
rative ; here I will only say that throughout the vagaries of my rather
complicated existence, it was my wife who so organized things as to give
me a stable and tolerably safe background ; if I have been able to carry
on, to give my whole mind to my work, without taking much thought

72 TRIAL AND ERROR

for financial or other practical matters, it has been entirely due to her
forethought, her devotion and her savoir faire.

When we first met, my world of Zionist and Jewish affairs was for
her more or less of a closed book. Had it not been for her innate sense of
justice, and her desire to study things for herself before making up her
mind, there might have been an unbridgeable gulf between us. But in
her own quiet, studious and unassuming way, she began to absorb knowl-
edge of this side of my life ; during our Manchester days, which came
soon after, she did a considerable amount of Zionist reading, which
was none too easy for her at a time when, besides keeping house and
looking after our first son, she worked for her English medical degree,
and had to give most of her free time to her lectures and her clinics.
Later she accompanied me to all of the Congresses and to Actions Com-
mittee meetings ; she got to know some of my Zionist friends and within
a few years she acquired an expert understanding of our affairs.

At the outset I did not ask her whether she felt any sympathy for
this world of mine, so new to her. Neither did I take it for granted. I left
it to time and her own free decision. I was happy to watch her growing
interest, and to see her becoming more and more attracted to the move-
ment, From the first I felt that one day — ^not far distant — she would
come to play a very great part not only in my personal life, but also in
the life of the movement.

As the years passed, she accompanied me more and more frequently
on the far-flung journeys which my Zionist affairs imposed on me. This
gave me the privilege and advantage of her company in strange lands ;
it also gave her the chance of acquiring a shrewd insight into the
problems of the movement and the characters of my Zionist friends and
co-workers. Often she guarded me from pitfalls which her calm judg-
ment detected before mine did. I was much more venturous, in a sense
much more superficial, more happy-go-lucky, than she; so that I think
we came to form a strong combination.

On one of my trips to Palestine closely following the First World
War, we had to move in haste from a house on Addison Road (we were
then living in London), which was being sold over our heads. My wife
found another house, on Addison Crescent, but it could not be rented, it
could only be bought. She asked me, by mail, whether she should make
the purchase, and I answered that I was content to be guided by her
views in such matters. She acquired, decorated and furnished the house
— in her own exquisite taste — during my absence. That house was for
thirty years the center for all who were interested in, or connected with,
Zionism and Palestine. Statesmen like Lord Balfour, General Smuts,
Lord Cecil, Leon Blum, Mr. Philip Kerr, soldiers like Meinertzhagen,
Macdonogh, Wyndham Deedes, T. E. Lawrence, Orde Wingate, Zionists
like Bialik, Shmarya Levin, Feivel and Jacobson, American friends and

GENEVA YEARS

73

supporters like Felix Warburg, Louis Marshall, Stephen S. Wise, Louis
Lipsky, Morris Rothenberg, Ben Cohen and others, Palestinians visit-
ing London, like Ruppin and Arlosoroff — ^all passed through Addison
Crescent and all enjoyed Mrs. Weizmann’s warm and unobtrusive
hospitality. In this home our boys grew up, here they spent their holi-
days and brought their friends; and here we stayed until the outbreak
of the Second World War. By then my elder boy had married, and the
younger was already in the RAF, so that we found ourselves alone in a
house much too big for us. We decided with deep regret to give it up,
consoled by the fact that we had by then made ourselves another home
in Palestine. Of this I shall tell later, only noting here that again it
was my wife’s practical sense and exquisite taste which are everywhere
in evidence in our Rehovoth home.

All this was in the far-off future when we became engaged in Geneva,
shortly before my departure for England.

CHAPTER 6

End of Geneva Days

The Russian Tyranny — A Tour of the Russian Provinces —
My Death by Hanging Is Predicted — Nahum Sokolow in
Warsaw — The Kishinev Pogrom — The Effect on the Zionist
Movement and on Her A — Herzl Visits Russia, Sees Von
Plehve — The Sixth Congress and Uganda — The Meaning of
the Uganda Incident — Lord Percy and Sir Harry Johnstone
on the Uganda Offer — Sir Evans Gordon and the Aliens Bill
— The El Arish Offer — The Crossroads in My Life.

]VIy youth ended in Geneva; not by the strict count of years,
according to which it had ended before, but rather by the division of
my life. My last days in Geneva coincided with the great darkening of
Jewish life in Russia, with the shock and disappointment of the Uganda
incident in Zionism, with the death of Herzl. My youth did not close;
it was closed for me. Then came a sort of interregnum, and a rebirth
to new effort; but not in Geneva.

Early in 1903 I was hard at work both on chemistry and Zionism.
I spent long days, and often whole nights, in the laboratory, engaged
on a piece of research which was interesting in itself and which gave
promise — a promise to be fulfilled — of new vistas in chemistry. It set
the course of my investigations for many years to come, and formed
the basis of several contributions to scientific journals. But only half
of my energies were given to chemistry, and that half imperfectly; for
while my scientific work never intruded on my preoccupation with the
Jewish problem, the Jewish problem did pursue me into the laboratory.
And it could not be otherwise. The times were tense, and the air was
charged with disruptive forces. Russia was moving toward war with
Japan, her reactionary rulership urged in that direction by the increasing
pressure of social discontentment and mounting revolution. The Jews
within the Pale were ceasing to bear their sufferings passively. The
younger generation was flocking to the ranks of the revolutionaries or
else, though to a smaller extent, to the Zionist movement. The Bund,
the Jewish revolutionary organization, was now a power, counting its
adherents in the tens of thousands. The czarist bureaucracy, hostile at

74

END OF GENEVA DAYS 75

best to the Jews, began to retaliate with special ferocity, and thousands
of young Jews were thrown into prison or sent to Siberia. There was
hardly a Jewish family in Russia in those days which had failed to pay
its toll one way or another.

In March 1903, unable to endure any longer the seclusion of Geneva,
I broke off my scientific work, and returned to Russia for a tour of
the Russian-Jewish communities. It was the longest journey of its kind
I had ever undertaken, and, within Russia, the last. It took me through
the Pale and through many cities of the north, the south and the
southeast. The immediate object of the journey was to spread the idea
of the Hebrew University; the more general object was Zionist propa-
ganda. I began with university towns like Kiev and Kharkov — and
everywhere I found an encouraging response, both from nationally
conscious students and from the communities at large. In Kiev, Professor
Mandelstamm, the noted oculist and ardent supporter of Herzl, took me
to see Mr. Brodsky, the sugar king of Russia. Mr. Brodsky was opposed
to Zionism, but he was keenly interested in the university project, and
promised us unqualified support. He was not alone in this attitude.
Then, as later, those wealthy Jews who could not wholly divorce them-
selves from a feeling of responsibility toward their people, but at the
same time could not identify themselves with the hopes of the masses,
were prepared with a sort of left-handed generosity, on condition that
their right hand did not know what their left hand was doing. To them
the university-to-be in Jerusalem was philanthropy, which did not
compromise them; to us it was nationalist renaissance. They would
give — ^with disclaimers ; we would accept — ^with reservations.

Zionist propaganda in Russia was a ticklish business. It was admittedly
not as dangerous as revolutionary propaganda ; but it was not a straight-
forward business, either. I recall a diverting incident which took place
in the course of this tour. I went from Kiev direct to Nikolaiev, a
military and naval port on the Black Sea. It had no importance as a
Jewish center, since Jews could not settle there, and it contained only
a small community, dating from preproscription times. Of course I
did not have a permit to visit Nikolaiev, and I went there because I
was anxious to see an imcle of mine, a gifted Hebrew educator and
a close friend.

I had not intended to do any propaganda work in Nikolaiev, but
since I was already in the city the local Zionists could not let the
occasion pass. A meeting was called, in the synagogue, naturally. There
was no law against prayers. Unfortunately, the heavy attendance
attracted the attention of the authorities, and while I was in the middle
3f my speech the building was surrounded by Cossacks, the police
entered and marched off the whole congregation, including of course,
the speaker, to the police station. I was brought before the chief of

76

TRIAL AND ERROR

police, who subjected me to a long and searching interrogation. Since
it was useless to pretend that we had been praying, I tried to explain
what Zionism meant, and what the real object of my visit was. The
subject was entirely foreign to the chief of police, who was good natured,
suspicious and very much convinced of his native shrewdness. As an
official, he was down on every ‘hsm,^’ and Zionism sounded like socialism.
He was convinced that we were engaged in subversive activities, dan-
gerous to Russia and the Little Father. I made some headway with him
until it occurred to him that we might be collecting money to send out
of the country, which was also forbidden by law. Of this, too, I tried
to disabuse his mind, and naturally he had no proof of our guilt. Then
he asked me:

“Well, how do you finance your undertaking?’’

“We have a bank in London,” I answered, meaning the Jewish
Colonial Trust. This interested him at once, and he went on to inquire
as to the amount of the money available in the bank, its management,
organization and so on.

“It’s a good idea,” he said, finally, “to take all the Jews to Palestine.
But why do you come to Nikolaiev, where there are so few of them.
Why don’t you go to Odessa?”

I explained that I was in fact on my way to Odessa, and that I had
merely stopped off in Nikolaiev for a visit. Then suddenly, as if he had
been keeping the question up his sleeve as sort of coup de grace, he said :

“How do you know there’s any money in that bank of yours?”

“That is simple,” I said. “They send us regular statements and
accounts.”

Thereupon he leaned back in his chair and laughed uproariously.

“Young man, you are a dreamer — ^and a fool into the bargain. Look
at those safes !” He waved a hand toward the locked cabinets that lined
the walls. “They’re full of statements and accounts and receipts and
checks. Every kopeck is there — on paper. But if you ask me where the
money is” — ^he pursed up his lips and gave vent to a short, derisive
whistle. “I assure you, there isn’t a kopeck in your bank, either ! There
can’t be.”

He was immensely impressed with his own penetration. I played the
innocent, which put him in high good humor. He even became polite, as
well as compassionate.

“I’ll let you off this time,” he said. “But you’ll have to take the next
train to Odessa.”

I acceded promptly to the suggestion, thankfully submitted my pass-
port to be stamped, and was preparing to leave the office when he called
me back, got up, put his hand on my shoulder and said, with great
kindliness :

“Look here! I see you’re not a bad young man, really. Take my

END OF GENEVA DAYS

77

advice and have nothing more to do with those damn Jews. For if they
ever get to this kingdom of theirs, the first man they'll string up to a
lamppost will be you !"

On this I parted from him and caught the next train to Odessa, very
cheerful over what I regarded as an unusual piece of good luck.

My tour took me eastward to Rostov-on-Don, where I visited my
fiancee's family for the first time, and southward to the remote Jewish
community of Baku, on the Caspian Sea. Then I turned back north,
and passed through Kishinev and Kherson, going as far as St. Peters-
burg. A curious circumstance which I noticed in those days was that
the farther one traveled from the Pale of Settlement, the more normal
were the relations between Jews and non-Jews. In Rostov, for example,
the Jewish and Russian doctors and lawyers — ^the intelligentsia —
mingled with little difficulty. But in the cities of the Pale, or in other
cities with a large Jewish population, the infamous Black Hundreds
organizations were at work. Krushevan's abominable anti-Semitic paper,
Besserahetz, was poisoning the air of Bessarabia. The Black Hundreds
were composed mostly of a hooligan element, with some admixture of the
local police and the clergy — a sinister combination the aim of which was,
of course, to create a diversion from the oncoming revolution, the Jews
being used, in this classic maneuver, as the lightning conductors. Per-
haps no other paper sank to the level of Krushevan's, but Novo ye
Vremya of St. Petersburg and the Grezhdanin of Kiev were provocative
and criminal in their attitude toward the Jews.

I noticed something else during this fairly thorough review of the
Russian- Jewish communities, and that was the contrast between the
Zionist and the revolutionary movements. We had made distinct prog-
ress ; everywhere well-informed and able men and women were at work
in the Zionist movement, preaching, organizing and hoping. There were
young people among them, there were students and professional men,
and large numbers were ready to pack up and go to Palestine; from
their ranks were drawn the second Aliy ah, or wave of immigration
(the first Aliy ah was that of the early eighties of the last century), that
of 1905. But it could not be denied that we were making little headway
against the tide of assimilatory revolutionary sentiment.

I was home again in Pinsk for the first days of Passover. It had been
a great and enlightening experience for me. I had encountered difficulties,
but I had also met, especially on the matter of the university, with
encouragement and support. During the secular Passover interval I
made a trip to Warsaw, to consult with Nahum Sokolow, who headed
in the city an influential committee for the Hebrew University.

Sokolow, of whom I have not yet spoken, was among the older
leaders in the Zionist movement, and in some ways one of the most
remarkable. He was already famous in the Jewish world — at least, in

TRIAL AND ERROR

78

the Hebrew-reading section of it — when Herzl appeared on the scene.
He had been an ilui (a boy genius) precocious in scholarship and in
mastery of the Hebrew language, and he had developed into “the
European” among the Hebrew writers. He was extraordinarily versatile,
particularly in the acquisition of languages. When I was a student in
Berlin, and for many years afterward, he was the editor of Ha-Z ephirah,
the leading Hebrew periodical of that time, and the principal organ of
the Hebrew cultural renaissance. He lived in Warsaw, and any Jew
with Hebrew cultural or Zionist political pretensions would always call
on him when passing through the city. On my travels between Germany
or Switzerland and Russia I made it a point to stop in Warsaw in
order to visit his house. And a very strange house it was ; it put one
in mind of a railroad station. People— mostly the youth— were forever
coming and going, at the oddest hours. There was no coziness about the
house, but there was always someone interesting to be encountered.
Sokolow himself was there only on occasion. He would show up at
noon, or a little later, in his dressing gown, and, in the afternoon
disappear, to visit his favorite cafe, where he stayed until midnight.
On his return home he would sit up until the small hours, preparing
the next issue of Ha-Zephirah. He always had a dozen leading articles
written in advance, and often filled an entire issue with his own material.
He wrote on every conceivable subject and in every conceivable style,
feuilletonSj literary criticisms, dramatic reviews, political surveys and
philosophic essays. Ha-Zephirah was always well written and well
produced; its standards were high, its reputation without a rival. But
the practical side of it rested on the shoulders of Mrs. Sokolow. Sokolow
himself never took the slightest interest in the business management.
Sometimes it seemed that, for the lack of a few hundred rubles, the
paper would have to suspend publication. Always it was Mrs. Sokolow
who rescued it. She carried the burden of the publication and of her
household with skill and dignity.

Sokolow was always friendly toward young people, especially in
their struggle to bring the cultural aspect of Zionism to the fore. But his
support of us was mild, gentle, measured and without enthusiasm. The
lack of practicality which he displayed in his management of Ha-Zephirah
was carried over into other affairs. He had no idea of time, or of the
mpaniTig of a practical commitment. I remember that at one of the early
Congresses he proposed the excellent idea of a Hebrew encyclopedia,
and even said that he had obtained the funds for it. Of course he was
just the man for such an enterprise, and we, the young people, were
delighted when he asked us to collaborate with him. We waited until
the excitement of the Congress was over, and went with him across
the lake to Interlaken, for a quiet talk. He gave us a nice lunch and

END OF GENEVA DAYS

79

talked of everything under the sun — ^but the encyclopedia. We went
away slightly dazed, and we never heard of the subject again.

From my earliest contacts with Sokolow I obtained a curious impres-
sion of overdiversification of opinions and convictions. In HchZephirah
he was a nationalist and Hebraist ; but he also edited a Polish newspaper,
Israelita, which catered in a general way to assimilated Jews, and in
this periodical his nationalism was much less in evidence. This duality
in his attitude was not repellent, for it was part of his nature to seek
to harmonize extremes. We yoimgsters were intransigeant — ^and yet
we were drawn to Sokolow. He felt that we were dogmatic, borne,
doctrinaire, and he tried to lead us on to understand the points of view
of others, to temper what he considered our Jewish and Slavic in-
tolerance. He was always in favor of compromise. ‘‘The world will not
go under,^' he would say, “if you yield an inch; and it makes life a
little more bearable.'’ He was worldly in temperament and outlook, and
he had a faculty which most of us lacked for the enjoyment of the good
things of life.

Occasionally we were outraged by the Olympianism of his detachment
— ^and in this connection I remember particularly my visit to him in that
spring of 1903. It was during those Passover days that we got the news
of the ghastly Kishinev pogrom. I lost my head, and was in something
like a panic. Not so Sokolow. Telegrams were pouring into the office
of Ha-Zephirah, with details of the butchery. In the midst of the
imiversal horror Sokolow remained calm. Not that he lacked sympathy,
but it was not in his nature to lose his balance. In that respect he was
perhaps a corrective to the youth— -but we did not always find it easy
to respect such philosophic objectivity.

A generation like the present, which has been steeped in tragedies
far transcending the Russian pogroms, may wonder in retros^ct at the
thrill of horror which Kishinev sent through the Jewish w^ld. I do
not know whether Kishinev was the worst of those Russian ^utrages
of the early 1900’s. Certainly it cannot compete with what A^e have
become accustomed to in the fourth and fifth decades of this century.
Perhaps the key lies there: “What we have become accustomed to.”
In our memories Kishinev has remained the classic prototype of the
pogrom. It was the first to take place in the twmtieth century. It was
the first — at a remove of nearly a generation — rafter the bloody series
which had initiated the reign of Alexander HI. Perhaps, Bgmn, we
were moved by a half-conscious foreboding of what the new cmtury
had in store for us.

Forty-five men, women and children killed, more than a thousand
wounded, fifteen hundred homes and shops destroyed and looted — ^this
is the cold summary of tte Kishin^ pogrom. For twenty-four hours
the Jews of Kishinev were delivered up to the fury of a mob drawn

8o

TRIAL AND ERROR

from the city riffraff and the countryside. It was only on the afternoon
of the second day that on the delayed order of the unspeakable Von
Plehve, the Minister of the Interior, the military stepped in and halted
the carnage and destruction.

The wave of indignation and despair which swept over the whole
Jewish community, from one end of Russia to the other, was augmented
by the complex feelings of humiliation and impotence. The Kishinev
pogrom was the reply of czarist Russia to the cry of freedom of its
Jewish subjects. We knew intuitively that it was not to be the last,
but was rather the signal for a whole series. The massacres were
deliberately organized, carefully planned, and everywhere carried out
under the eyes of the civil and military authorities, which stepped in
only when they judged that the slaughter and pillaging had gone far
enough. The general Russian press was forbidden to tell the true story.
The protests of Tolstoi and Korolenko were refused publication. Even
we, the Jews, could speak of our misfortunes only in guarded tones.
When our national poet Bialik wrote his flaming indictment of the
pogrom, he had to disguise the allusion under a fictitious title — The
Burden of Nemirov. For the general Russian public it was reported
that there had been '"incidents,” drunken brawls of no particular
importance.

Perhaps the most tormenting feature of the Kishinev pogrom was
the fact that the Jews had allowed themselves to be slaughtered like
sheep, without offering general resistance. In spite of the wild pogrom
agitation of Krushevan, they had refused to believe in the possibility
of a massacre carried out under the aegis of the Government; and the
attack which occurred in the midst of the last sacred days of Passover
overwhelmed them. The enemy, on the other hand, was well organized
and the pogrom developed from section to section of the city with almost
military effectiveness. There was no chance of improvising a defense.
Here and there younger people, who happened to be in possession of
firearms, put up a fight ; they were at once disarmed by the military.

I had intended to proceed from Warsaw to Geneva. I abandoned my
classes, such as they were, and returned to the Pale. Together with
friends and acquaintances I proceeded to organize self-defense groups
in all the larger Jewish centers. Not long afterward, when a pogrom
broke out in Homel, not far from Pinsk, the hooligans were suddenly
confronted by a strongly organized Jewish self-defense corps. Again
the military interfered, and did its best to disarm the Jews ; but at least
the self-defense had broken the first wave of the attack, which was not
able to gather again its original momentum. Thus, throughout the Pale,
an inverted guerrilla warfare spread, between the Jews and the Russian
authorities, the former trying to maintain order, the latter encouraging
disorder. The Jews grew more and more exasperated and our life
therefore more and more intolerable.

END OF GENEVA DAYS

8i

I remember distinctly a time when a pogrom came as a positive relief
to ns. The tension, the constant alarms, the anomalous relations between
us and our neighbors were harder to put up with than the actual attack.
How could we be quite certain who would side with us, who would
be neutral and who would join the attackers? At least when the attack
took place we knew the worst, we could face up to our enemies and
then, when the storm had passed, we might expect a period of com-
parative tranquillity. During the period of mounting suspense all normal
activity seemed meaningless. We were at war. Our dreams of Palestine,
our plans for a Hebrew university, receded into the background, or
were blotted out. Our eyes saw nothing but the blood of slaughtered
men, women and children, our ears were deaf to everything but their
cries.

When at last I did return to Geneva, I found no peace in the labora-
tory or the lecture hall. Every letter I received from Russia was a
lamentation. My spirits were depressed, my daily occupations seemed
to be trivial ; and yet I was powerless to help. I looked forward to the
summer, and the Zionist Congress — ^it was to be the sixth — ^with
mingled feelings of futility and of mystical hope.

It was clear to me that the Kishinev pogrom and the reign of terror
which it opened boded no good for our movement. In a time of panic
plans lose their shape, creative work becomes impossible, the stage is
monopolized by wild and impossible schemes. The pressure of panic,
while it became most manifest after the Kishinev pogrom, had been laid
on the Zionist movement for years. ^^The quick solution’’ had haunted us
at every Congress, distracting us from sober planning and those un-
avoidably small beginnings which must precede larger achievement.
It was in pursuit of a phantom diplomatic triumph that the official
Zionist Organization had neglected the spiritual development of the
movement, leaving that to us of the Democratic Fraction.

When I returned to Geneva in the late spring of 1903, I addressed a
memorandum to Herzl, in my name and Feivel’s, in which I set forth the
oppositional criticism of the Democratic Fraction. I reported on condi-
tions in Russia, on the spread of revolutionary sentiment among the
Jewish youth, on the new repressive measures instituted by Von Plehve,
and on the difficulties which beset the Zionist movement among the Jews
themselves. Our progress, I said, was blocked there by the rightist
attitude of the Zionist leadership and by its clericalist inclinations. As
against this, Russian officialdom took its views of Zionism from Zionist
publications which described the Democratic Fraction as ^'anarchistic,
nihilistic, etc.” The Jewish youth of Russia was turning from us because
it would have nothing to do with an official Zionism which it regarded
as Mizrachist and petty bourgeois, while within the movement itself all
other tendencies were stamped as atheistic and revolutionary. I pointed
out to Herzl that this clericalist coloring arose from the fact that west

8 ^

TRIAL AND ERROR

European Zionism represented a passive nationalism, consciously or
unconsciously influenced by assimilation, springing from a Judaism
chiefly religious but not rooted in Jewish knowledge and folk experience.
Meanwhile the continuous demand for practical work in Palestine was
being ignored.

But Herzl, whatever he may have felt regarding the justice of our
observations, was increasingly the prisoner of his line of action. He was
driven to intensify and to emphasize his diplomatic activity. The calam-
ities o£ Russian Jewry overwhelmed him; he foresaw the new tides of
immigration which Kishinev and its aftermath would set in motion, and
he redoubled his efforts for ‘‘the quick solution.’’ As the summer ap-
proached we heard vague rumors of political negotiations with England ;
but we did not learn of their character until the Congress met. Mean-
while another facet of Herzl’s far-flung activities was made public.
Herzl had managed to arrange an interview, in St. Petersburg, with
Von Plehve, the man whose hands were stained with the blood of thou-
sands of Jewish victims ! And in the early part of August, shortly before
the opening of the Congress, Herzl actually came to Russia to be re-
ceived by the butcher of Kishinev.

There was a passionate division of opinion on this step. There were
some who believed that the Jewish leader could not pick and choose his
contacts, but had to negotiate even with a murderer if some practical
good would come of it. Others could not tolerate the thought of this
final humiliation. But there were still others — I was among them— who
believed that the step was not only humiliating, but utterly pointless.
Von Plehve, who had passed a series of decrees, shortly after the
Kishinev pogrom, designed to render impossible any sort of Zionist
activity, would not make any promises worth the recording ; if he did,
he would not keep them. It turned out that Herzl not only hoped to
influence Von Plehve to suppress the activities of the Black Hundreds
(it was an utterly fantastic hope since anti-Semitism was a necessary
instrument of policy to Von Plehve, to Pobiedonostsev, the Procurator
of the Holy Synod, and to the whole czarist clique) he even dreamed
of enlisting Russian aid in persuading Abdul Hamid, the feeble ruler of
Turkey, to open the gates of Palestine to us. Unreality could go no
further; anti-Semites are incapable of aiding in the creation of a Jewish
homeland; their attitude forbids them to do anything which might really
help the Jewish people. Pogroms, yes ; repressions, yes ; emigration, yes ;
but nothing that might be conducive to the freedom of the Jews.

Such was the fathomless despair of masses of Russian Jews that
Herzl’s progress through the Jewish communities took on an almost
Messianic aspect. In Vilna, especially, there was a tremendous outpour-
ing of the Jewish population, and a great surge of blind hope, baseless,
elemental, instinctive and hysterical, attended his arrival. Nothing came,

END OF GENEVA DAYS

83

naturally, of Herzl’s ‘"cordial” conversations with Von Plehve, nothing,
that is, except disillusionment and deeper despair, and a deeper division
between the Zionists and the revolutionaries, for the latter were partic-
ularly furious at this concession to reaction, Herzl records his talks with
Von Plehve in his memoirs. Many generalities were uttered. Von Plehve
reiterated the stock accusation lhat the Jews were all revolutionaries,
and made some vague promises which he had no intention of keeping.
In exchange for these, Herzl, in an address to the Jewish leaders of St.
Petersburg, warned the Zionists against harboring radical elements in
their midst ! The memorandum which I had sent him had produced no
results.

Worse was to follow at the Sixth Congress. It opened under the
shadow of the Kishinev pogrom and HerzFs visit to Von Plehve; it
closed with the Uganda episode.

The flurry of rumors regarding HerzFs negotiations with the British
Government was put to rest only when the facts were submitted to the
Congress. Before making these facts public, Herzl had already consulted
the Actions Committee — ^the cabinet — of the Congress, and had dis-
covered that he would encounter strong opposition. How strong he was
yet to learn. There was, among many of the Russian delegates, a deep
resentment against Herzl in connection with his visit to Von Plehve.
They could not speak out — ^though Nachman Syrkin did express bitter
disapproval on the floor of the Congress — ^because they knew that even
in Basle they were being watched by the Russian secret police, and that
they would be held accountable, when they returned to Russia, for every
incautious word. This repressed resentment was fortified when, having
set the stage with his customary skill, Herzl read forth the famous letter
from the British Government, signed by Lord Lansdowne, offering the
Jews an autonomous territory in Uganda, in that part of it which is now
British East Africa.

I remember one deeply significant detail of the stage setting. It had
always been the custom to hang on the wall, immediately behind the
President's chair, a map of Palestine. This had been replaced by a rough
map of die Uganda protectorate, and the symbolic action got us on the
quick, and filled us with foreboding. Herzl opened his address with a
vivid picture of the situation of the Jews, which we, the Russian Jews,
knew only too well. He deduced from it only one thing; the urgent
necessity of bringing immediate, large-scale relief by emigration to the
stricken people. Emergency measure were needed. He did not relin-
quish the idea of Palestine as the Jewish homeland. On the contrary, he
intimated that Von Pldive’s promises to bring Russian pressure to bear
on Turkey had improved our prospects in Palestine. But as far as the
immediate problem was concerned, something new, something of great
significance, had developed. The British Government had made lis the

84 TRIAL AND ERROR

offer of a territory in British East Africa. Admittedly British East
Africa was not Zion, and never would be. It was only an auxiliary ac-
tivity — but on a national or state foundation.

It was an extraordinary speech, carefully prepared — ^too carefully in
fact, for its cautious, balanced paragraphs betrayed the essential con-
tradictions of the situation. Herzl had already encountered deep opposi-
tion in the closed session of the Actions Committee. But he had obtained
a majority, and had enforced the unit rule, so that he could present the
British offer in the name of the Actions Committee. Knowing, then,
that he would encounter similar opposition on the floor of Congress, he
did not submit the proposition that the British offer be accepted; he
cushioned the proposal by suggesting that the Congress send a com-
mission of investigation to the territory in question, to report on its
suitability.

The effect on the Congress was a curious one. The delegates were
electrified by the news. This was the first time in the exilic history of
Jewry that a great government had officially negotiated with the elected
representatives of the Jewish people. The identity, the legal personality
of the Jewish people, had been re-established. So much, then, had been
achieved by our movement; and it meant much. But as soon as the
substance of the offer, and Herzhs manner of announcing it, sank home,
a spirit of disquiet, dejection and anxiety spread through the Congress.
It was clear that Herzhs faith in Von Plehve's support of our hopes in
Palestine was more or less put on. And again, it was all very well to talk
of Uganda as an auxiliary and a temporary measure, but the deflection
of our energies to a purely relief effort would mean, whatever HerzFs
intentions were, the practical dismantling of the Zionist Organization in
so far as it had to do with Zion.

How was it that Herzl could contemplate such a shift of objective?
It was the logical consequence of his conception of Zionism and of the
role which the movement had to play in the life of the Jews, To him,
and to many with him — ^perhaps the majority of the representatives of
the Jews assembled in Basle — Zionism meant an immediate solution of
the problems besetting their sorely tried people. If it was not that, it was
nothing at all. The conception was at once crude, naive and generous.
There is no immediate solution of great historic problems. There is only
movement in the direction of the solution. Herzl, the leader, had set out
with the contrary belief ; and he met with disappointment. The Judennot
— ^the Jewish need — ^was increasing hourly. Herzl had been in Russia
and had cast a shuddering glance at the Pale and its miseries. Every-
where he had been received by a desperate people as its redeemer; it
was his duty now to redeem. If Palestine was not, at the moment, feas-
ible, he could not wait, for the flood of anti-Semitism was rising minute
by minute and — ^to use his own words — lower strata of the Jewish

END OF GENEVA DAYS

85

edifice were already inundated.” If an3d:hing were to happen, then, there
might not be enough Jews left to build Palestine; hence the offer of the
British Government was providential; it had come just in the nick of
time — 3 , very present help in time of trouble. It would be cruel, heart-
less, un-Jewish and un-Zionistic, to throw away a chance which might
never again occur in the history of the Jewish people,

HerzFs statement to the Congress was cautious, dignified and
guarded; off stage, in the lobbies of the Congress, he was less diplo-
matic, more human, more vehement. He, and those under his influence,
little thought that what he was offering to Jews and Zionists was a snare
and a delusion: there was no territorial project, however magnificent it
might appear at first blush, which could possibly, within a short space
of time, have relieved the tension and appreciably mitigated the disasters
which had come upon us, with the force of an avalanche. Jewish emigra-
tion from Russia, which before Kishinev had been rising steadily,
reached the figure of one hundred thousand per annum after Kishinev.
Those who spoke calmly of deflecting the stream of immigration to
Uganda did not stop to reflect that Uganda was a country of which
only one thing was known, namely, that it was a desolate wilderness
populated by savage tribes; neither its nature, its climate, its agricul-
tural nor its other possibilities corresponded — at the optimistic be^t — ^to
thef need of the hour. It is hard to tell to what extent Herzl was com-
pletely taken in by the Uganda proposal. In his tortuous diplomatic
calculations, he was also thinking of Uganda as a pawn. He wanted the
Congress to accept Uganda in order to frighten the Sultan into action,
as if to say : ^Tf you won^t give us Palestine, well drop you completely
and go to British East Africa.”

In any case, the proposal before the Congress was only that of an
investigation committee. But no one was mistaken as to the symbolic
significance of that proposal. A deep, painful and passionate division
manifested itself on the floor of the Congress. When the first session was
suspended, and the delegates scattered in the lobbies, or hastened to their
caucuses, a young woman ran up on the platform, and with a vehement
gesture tore down the map of Uganda which had been suspended there
in place of tlie usual map of Zion.

I proceeded to the caucus of the Russian delegation, the largest at the
Congress, for the discussion of our stand on the Uganda proposal.
Ussishkin, the leader of the Russian Zionists — ^who was of course bit-
terly anti-Ugandist — ^was not at the Congress. He was in Palestine, The
other Russian leaders, Kohan-Bemstein, Shmarya Levin, Victor Jacob-
son, were as implacably anti-Ugandist. The Polish delegates (they were
a subgroup of the Russian delegation) were divided. Sokolow — charac-
teristically — ^would not commit himself. My father, who was a fellow-
delegate with me from Pinsk, was of the Russian minority which was

86

TRIAL AND ERROR

pro-Uganda — so was my brother Shmuel — ^and for the only time in our
lives there was a coolness between us. I should mention that among the
Russian Zionists there was a certain type of respectable middle-class
householder which had always been skeptical of the feasibility of the
rebuilding of Palestine. There were practical men, merchants, men of
affairs, who argued that HerzFs efforts for Palestine had reached an
impasse. “What’s the good of pursuing a phantom?” they said. And
then again: “What have we to lose by accepting Uganda?” Or else it
was : “The British are a great people. It is a great government which
makes the offer. We must not offend a great government by refusing.”

All of these arguments, it seemed to me, were informed by a curious
inferiority complex. In the session of the Russian delegation, I made a
violent speech against the Uganda project, and swung to our side many
of the hesitant. In the confusion of the offer, which Herzl had flung so
dramatically at the Congress, many of the delegates had lost their bear-
ings. I myself, I admitted, had for a moment looked upon the incident
as a party maneuver but it had become clear to me that it was much
more fundamental. It was an attempt to give a totally new character to
the Zionist movement. The very fact, I said, that the Mizrachi — ^the
religious Zionists — ^were mostly for Uganda, and the Democratic Frac-
tion mostly against it, revealed the nature of the move.

“The influence of Herzl on the people is very great,” I said. “Even the
opponents of Uganda cannot get away from it, and they cannot make up
their minds to state openly that this is a departure from the Basle pro-
gram. Herzl, who found the Chibath Zion movement already in exist-
ence, made a pact with it. But as time passed, and the idea of Palestine
did not succeed, he regretted the pact. He reckoned only with external
conditions, whereas the forces on which we base ourselves lie deep in the
psychology of our people and in its living impulses. We knew that
Palestine could not be obtained in short order, and that is why we do
not despair if this or that particular attempt fails.” And I closed my
speech with these words: “If the British Government and people are
what I think they are, they will make us a better offer.” This last sen-
tence became a sort of slogan for the anti-Ugandists at the Congress.

The debate on the Uganda proposal had opened at the first session
of the Plenum with a speech in the affirmative by Max Nordau. It was
not a convincing speech, for Nordau himself was not thoroughly con-
vinced, and had yielded only to pressure. It was then that he coined the
famous phrase Nachtasyl — anight shelter; Uganda was to be colonized,
nationally, as a sort of halfway station to Palestine. As the debate un-
folded, the first flush of excitement over the recognition of the Zionist
Organization b}^ a great government died away. The feeling against the
proposal began to crystallize.

The debate was resumed after the separate sessions of the caucuses.

END OF GENEVA DAYS 87

and was closed by a second address from Nordau. The Congress was in
a high state of tension. Family bonds and lifelong friendships were shat-
tered. The vote on the resolution was by roll call. Every delegate had to
say ^^Yes'' or "'No.'' The replies fell, in a deathly silence, like hammer
blows. We felt that the destiny of the Zionist movement was being
decided. Two hundred and ninety-five delegates voted "Yes," one hun-
dred and seventy-five "No." About a hundred abstained. I remember
vividly Herzl calling Sokolow’s name. "Herr Sokolow." No answer.
"Herr Sokolow !" No answer. And a third time, "Herr Sokolow !" With
the same result. To indicate the excitement under which all of us labored,
I record a minor incident which took place afterward, in the train which
was taking a group of us from Basle toward Russia. Tschlenow turned
to Sokolow and said :

"If I, or Weizmann here, had abstained from voting, it would have
mattered little; but how could you, the editor of the most important
Hebrew paper in Eastern Europe, to which thousands of readers look
for guidance, abstain? You must have an opinion one way or the other
on a fundamental question like this !"

To which Sokolow replied, with unwonted heat:

"I could write you a dozen articles on this issue, and you would not
find out whether I am pro or con. . . . And here you dare to ask me
to my face for a definite reply. That's more than I can stand !"

Now the extraordinary feature of the vote was that the great majority
of the negatives came from the Russian delegation ! The delegates from
Kishinev were against the Uganda offer ! It was absolutely beyond the
understanding of the Westerners. I recall how, after the vote, Herzl came
up to a group of delegates in the lobby, and in the course of a brief
interchange of views exclaimed, apropos of the recalcitrant Russians:
"These people have a rope around their necks, and still they refuse !"

A young lady, the one who had torn down the map of Uganda from
the wall behind the dais, happened to be standing by. She exclaimed,
vehemently: Monsieur le President, vous etes un traitre!^^ Herzl turned
on his heel.

Technically, Herzl had a majority for the Uganda proposal, but it was
quite clear that acceptance of the British offer would be futile. The vote
had been too close. Besides, the people for whom British East Africa was
to be accepted, the suffering, oppressed Russians, did not want it. They
would not relinquish Zion.

When the result of the roll call was announced in the Plenum the Rus-
sian members of the Actions Committee who had been against the pro-
posal at the closed session compelled Herzl to exonerate them from re-
sponsibility for the unit vote. They then left the dais and marched out
from the hall, followed by the great majority of the Russian delegates.
It was an unforgettable scene. Tschlenow, Kornberg and others of the

88

TRIAL AND ERROR

older statesmen wept openly. When the dissidents had assembled sepa-
rately, there were some delegates who, in the extremity of their distress,
sat down on the floor in the traditional ritual mourning which is ob-
served for the dead, or in commemoration of the destruction of the
temple on the ninth of Ab. I remember that not long afterward Achad
Ha-am wrote an article ‘'Ha-Bochim” (‘The Weepers”), in which he
mournfully recalled his consistent criticism of the lack of folk Zionism in
the Western leaders ; this defection from Palestine, he declared, had been
implicit in the Western leadership from the beginning; it had first
declared itself in Herzl's Judenstaat, in which Zion had not even been
mentioned ; then in his Altneuland, his Utopian novel which had
described a Jewish homeland of the future without a Jewish culture;
and now came the denouement, the substitution of a remote, unknown
African territory for the glory of the historic Jewish homeland.

Meanwhile, as we sat in caucus, depressed, our hearts filled with
bitterness, a message was brought in that Herzl would like to speak to
us. We sent back word that we would be glad to hear him. He came in,
looking haggard and exhausted. He was received in dead silence. No-
body rose from his seat to greet him, nobody applauded when he ended.
He admonished us for having left the hall ; he understood, he said, that
this was merely a spontaneous demonstration and not a secession; he
invited us to return. He reassured us of his unswerving devotion to
Palestine, and spoke again of the urgent need for finding an immediate
refuge for large masses of homeless Jews. We listened in silence; no one
attempted to reply. It was probably the only time that Herzl was thus
received at any Zionist gathering; he, the idol of all Zionists. He left
as he had entered ; but I think that at this small meeting he realized for
the first time the depth of the passion which linked us with Zion. This
was the last time that I saw him except from a distance, on the plat-
form. He died in the following year, at the age of forty-four.

Nothing came of the Uganda offer. The year after HerzFs death, at
the seventh Zionist Congress, in 1905, it was definitely rejected, and
Israel Zangwill and others seceded from the Zionist Organization in
order to found the Jewish Territorial Organization, which for years
looked for another territory on which to settle large numbers of Jews in
a homeland of their own, but never, never found one.

The sixth Congress, with its dramatic focalization of the Jewish prob-
lem, taught me much. In particular, two of the issues there presented
illustrated the principle of organic growth in which I have always be-
lieved. Nothing good is produced by panic. It was panic that moved
Herzl to accept the Uganda offer uncritically: it was panic that pre-
vented us from making good use of another proposal — ^that of El Arish,

END OF GENEVA DAYS 89

which was presented to the sixth Congress. I believe that the exposition
of both offers belongs to this record.

Shortly after the sixth Congress I decided to go to England to find out
for myself, if I could, what there was in the Uganda offer, which was to
come up for a final decision at the seventh Congress. I knew a few Eng-
lish Jews ; one was Leopold Greenberg, the editor of the London Jewish
Chronicle, but I could not go to him. He had been instrumental in bring-
ing Herzl together with Joseph Chamberlain and Lord Lansdowne and
Arthur James Balfour, who was then Prime Minister. My opposition to
the Uganda offer had made Greenberg my enemy, and we never estab-
lished friendly relations again. When I settled permanently in England,
Greenberg did his best to keep me out of the movement ; he succeeded,
certainly, in preventing me for a long time from developing close con-
tact with the London Zionists, and the Jewish Chronicle remained con-
sistently hostile to me. I also knew Dr. Moses Gaster, the Haham, or
head of the Sephardic Communities, who had been one of HerzFs earliest
supporters in England. I was to know him much better in later years. He
was a good Zionist but suffered, I believe, from jealousy; he considered
himself more fitted than Herzl for the position of President of the Zionist
Organization, but never rose higher than a Vice-Presidency of the
Congress.

It was to Gaster that I turned, and he gave me a letter to Lord Percy,
who was then in charge of African affairs. Lord Percy was the
first English statesman I met. He was a man in the thirties, with the
finely chiseled features of his family, courteous and affable in manner,
and obviously well informed. He asked me a great deal about the Zionist
movement, and expressed boundless astonishment that the Jews should
ever so much as have considered the Uganda proposal, which he re-
garded as impractical on the one hand, and, on the other, a denial of the
Jewish religion. Himself deeply religious, he was bewildered by the
thought that Jews could even entertain the idea of any other cotmtry
than Palestine as the center of their revival; and he was delighted to
hear from me that there were so many Jews who had categorically re-
fused. He said: ''If I were a Jew I would not give a halfpenny for this
proposition ^

I was so impressed by Lord Percy’§.^views that immediately on leaving
him I sat down in an adjoining room, and on the stationery of the For-
eign Office wrote a report of the conversation to piy fiancee. The sub-
stance of the letter I communicated to the ‘'Neinsager '' — ^the Nay-sayers
or opponents of Uganda — ^in Russia. I believe that this contributed not
a little to the final defeat of the Uganda proposal.

From Lord Percy I went to Sir Harry Johnston, the famous explorer,
whp knew Uganda well. He too was of the opinion that the practical
value of the offer was nil. He added that the few white settlers, mostly

90

TRIAL AND ERROR

English, who were already in Uganda, would fight against a Jewish in-
flux into their territory, which could not accommodate more than a very
limited number. I came to the conclusion that Greenberg had indoctrin-
ated Herzl with the idea, which lacked — apart from its ideological and
moral shortcomings — any solid foundation and which Herzl had grasped
at in the panic of pressure.

Johnston also sent me to see an English gentleman whose name was
widely and unfavorably known to the Jewish people — Sir William Evans
Gordon — ^the father of the Aliens Bill. He was generally regarded as
responsible for all the difficulties placed in the way of Jewish immigrants
into England. I had met him some years before, when he had been mak-
ing a tour of the Jewish Pale of Settlement in Russia. Looking back now,
I Aink our people were rather hard on him. The Aliens Bill in England,
and the movement which grew up around it were natural phenomena
which might have been foreseen. They were a repetition of a phenomenon
only too familiar in our history. Whenever the quantity of Jews in any
country reaches the saturation point, that country reacts against them.
In the early years of this century Whitechapel and the great industrial
centers of England were in that sense saturated. The fact that the actual
number of Jews in England, and even their proportion to the total popu-
lation, was smaller than in other countries was irrelevant ; the determin-
ing factor in this matter is not the solubility of the Jews, but the solvent
power of the country. England had reached the point when she could or
would absorb so many Jews and no more. English Jews were prepared
to be absorbed in larger numbers. The reaction against this cannot be
looked upon as anti-Semitism in the ordinary or vulgar sense of that
word; it is a universal social and economic concomitant of Jewish im-
migration, and we cannot shake it off.

Sir William Evans Gordon had no particular anti-Jewish prejudices.
He acted, as he thought, according to his best lights and in the most
kindly way, in the interests of his country. He had been horrified by what
he had seen of the oppression of the Jews in Russia, but in his opinion it
was physically impossible for England to make good the wrongs which
Russia had inflicted on its Jewish population. He was sorry, but he was
helpless. Also, he was sincerely ready to encourage any settlement of
Jews almost anywhere in the British Empire, but he failed to see why the
ghettos of London or Leeds or Whitechapel should be made into a branch
of the ghettos of Warsaw and Pinsk. I am fairly sure he would equally
have opposed the mass influx of any foreign element ; but as it happened,
no other foreign element pressed for admission in such numbers. It re-
quires a good deal of imagination to think of newly created ghettos in
terms of the second or third generations, which will have adapted them-
selves with incredible rapidity and skill to the structure of the new life, and
will have lost their identity almost beyond recognition ; to foresee them.

END OF GENEVA DAYS • 91

under changed names, figuring in the honors lists of Oxford and Cam-
bridge, and making genuine contributions to English life. It is too much
to expect the ordinary, well-meaning citizen to look so far ahead. It is too
much to expect him to view a strange and often — as he thinks — disturb-
ing element without that natural prejudice which a settled, firmly rooted
citizen of a country with an age-long tradition must feel in the presence
of a homeless wanderer, assumed to be continually on the lookout for a
home, a country to adopt. Sir William Evans Gordon gave me some
insight into the psychology of the settled citizen, and though my views
on immigration naturally were in sharp conflict with his, we discussed
these problems in a quite objective and even friendly way.

Uganda was one lesson in the dangers of panic policy. El Arish was
another.

During the sixth Congress we learned that, side by side with the
Uganda offer, there was another in the making. Herzl had been negoti-
ating with His Majesty’s Government on something much nearer home,
namely, the possibility of Jewish colonization in the strip of territory
between the present southern boundary of Palestine and Egypt, com-
monly known as El Arish. Apparently discussions had been going on for
some considerable time, but the general body of Zionists did not know
how these discussions had arisen, or an3d:hing else about them beyond
the fact that an expedition had been sent out to El Arish to survey the
ground, and that the expedition had brought back an unfavorable report.
We were informed at the Congress that His Majesty’s Government, al-
ways mindful of the Jews, and desirous of ameliorating their lot, had
given every facility to representatives of the Zionist movement to con-
duct an investigation on the spot. The commission had discussed the
situation fully with Lord Cromer, who had received them sympathetically,
but the project had been found to be impracticable owing to the lack of
water in this part of southern Palestine.

Irrigation possibilities had been discussed, but all these depended on
the utilization of water from the Nile, and to this the Egyptian Govern-
ment was naturally opposed. On a careful analysis of the report, and
with the scanty information made available to us at the Congress, one
could not help feeling that the commission’s attitude was largely dictated
by the ever-present desire of the Zionist leaders at that time to undertake
colonization only on a very large scale ; for only such colonization, they
felt, could do anything to lighten the sufferings of the Jewish people. If
large-scale colonization was not possible, they preferred to drop the entire
matter. In my opinion it was this view, and this view alone, which was
responsible for bringing the El Arish project — sl very tangible reality
— to nought. The expedition was not satisfied with the thin strip of land
along the coast of southern Palestine on which it was fairly certain that
colonies could have been established, since there was good prospect of

TRIAL AND ERROR

subterranean water. (There are, in fact, settlements in El Arish today.)
But that was too small a task for the great ideas which then prevailed in
the circles of the Zionist leadership. It was too modest a beginning. It
did not appeal to the vision and imagination either of the leaders or of
the masses, before whose eyes the word “solution’ ' was constantly
dangled. So the commission felt obliged to include in its investigation the
“Pelusian Plain” (Sinai Desert) ; and this did not lend itself to colon-
ization unless water was found. The project was abandoned in its
entirety, and no attempt made to examine in detail the smaller strip of
territory where colonization was possible. It might have made, I think,
a very considerable difference to the present fate of Palestine if we had
then concentrated on making a beginning, however small, along the
coast of southern Palestine.

Kishinev, Uganda, El Arish and the sixth Zionist Congress brought
a deep crisis into my life. I perceived the utter inadequacy of the Zionist
movement, as then constituted, in relation to the tragedy of the Jewish
people. Kishinev had only intensified in the Jews of Russia the in-
eradicable longing for a Jewish homeland in Palestine — ^in Palestine,
and not elsewhere. Elsewhere meant for them only a continuation of
the old historic rounds of refuge. They wanted Palestine because that
meant restoration in every sense. But the Zionist movement could not
give them Palestine there and then ; and a spirit of falsification and self-
betrayal had crept into the movement. The substitute project of Uganda
was chimerical; and it did not even speak the language of the ancient
hope and memory. Zionism was at the crossroads ; it would either learn
patience and endurance, and the hard lesson of organic growth, or it
would disintegrate into futility.

I felt that I too was at the crossroads, and that I had to take a decisive
step to signalize my realization that a new start had to be made. On July
4, 1904, Herzl died in Vienna; and on the day when a delegation of stu-
dents set out for Vienna to attend the funeral, I closed the first chapter
of my Zionist life, and set out for England, to begin the second.

CHAPTER 7

New Start in England

Why England? — Zionism in England Halj a Century Ago — ^
I Settle in Manchester — Professor Perkin — Fixing up a Labo-
ratory — First Lessons in English — Tom, the Lab Boy — First
Research Work in England — I Lecture in English — My Stu-
dents — My Tactful Japanese Colleague — The Insistent Call
of Zionism — A Zionist Meeting in Manchester — I Put My Foot
in It — English Zionism Recovers from Uganda — The Man-
chester Center Crystallises — Achad Ha-am in England.

iVlY FLIGHT to England, in 1904, was a deliberate and desperate
step. It was not, to be sure, real flight; it was in reality a case of
reculer pour mieux sauter. I was in danger of being eaten up by
Zionism, with no benefit either to my scientific career or to Zionism.
We had reached, it seemed to me, a dead point in the movement. My
struggles were destroying me ; an interval was needed before the possi-
bilities of fruitful work could be restored- Achieving nothing in my
public effort, neglecting my laboratory and my books, I was in danger
of degenerating into a Luftmensch, one of those well-meaning, undis-
ciplined and frustrated ‘‘eternal students’" of whom I have already
written. To become effective in any sense, I had to continue my education
in chemistry and wait for a more propitious time in the Zionist move-
ment.

I chose England for various reasons, chiefly intuitive. My position
in Geneva and my income from my patent were both petering out.
There was little scope for an alien in a small country like Switzerland,
which was already overcrowded with emigres from other countries,
especially my own. I knew little of France, and Paris had never attracted
me. Germany was out of the question. England presented itself to me as
a country in which, at least theoretically, a Jew might be allowed to
live and work without let or hindrance, and where he might be judged
entirely on his merits.

My Zionist views, too, led me to look upon England as the one
country which seemed likely to show a genuine sympathy for a move-
ment like ours; and the history of the relations between England and

93

94

TRIAL AND ERROR

Zionism, even at that time, bore witness to this probability. There were
no other reasons that I can recall, except my profound admiration for
England. There was certainly nothing of any material value in England
to attract me. I had no prospects whatsoever. In that sense it was a
leap in the dark. I took with me no impedimenta: I had none. My
assets consisted of a certain amount of chemical experience and many
good intentions — ^to work hard, to withdraw for a time from all public
activity, and to devote myself wholeheartedly to building up a new
life in new surroundings. I had no knowledge of the language, my circle
of acquaintances in England was very limited. I had no preference for
one part of the country over another. London, the first city I came to,
inspired me — ^as it had done on the occasion of my previous visits —
with awe; its size, its buildings, its climate terrified me. Among its
crowds I was a^ solitary, setting out on uncharted seas in a derelict
boat, without rudder or compass.

In London I lodged for a few weeks with a tailor on Sidney Street,
a sweet, gentle fellow, a Zionist like myself, but of the left wing. I
paid very little for my board and lodgings — certainly not enough to more
than cover the expense I caused him. There was a curious spirit of
isolation about this intelligent, well-read host of mine. He would walk
the streets of London with me, to teach me something about the city.
But he would not accompany me beyond the Bank. There he would stop
and say, solemnly: ‘T never go beyond this point.’’ For some obscure
reason I was terribly impressed by this touch of the hermit.

I saw Gaster, met Sir William Evans Gordon again and re-established
contact with some of the Zionists who had attended the Congresses. Zion-
ism in England reflected the general critical condition of the movement at
its worst. Zangwill was leading, or attempting to lead, Jewry into East
Africa, and it was regarded as something very near treason against
Zionist ideals to permit oneself to criticize the East African project, and
to insist that the Zionist movement must always have as its primary
object the upbuilding of Zion. Zionism at this time was acquiring a
peculiar savor; it tended to be transformed into a rather low-grade
British patriotism — a British patriotism based on an imaginary attach-
ment to an imaginary country which nobody had seen and nobody
knew, a remote dependency of the British Empire populated by savages.
But the mere fact that it was within the orbit of the British Empire was
sufficient to fire the imagination of many of the superpatriots. In their
enthusiasm they forgot the Biblical motto of the Zionist movement : 'Tf
I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning.”

I found myself isolated, socially, intellectually and morally. There was
a certain bitterness among many Zionists, who attributed the untimely
death of Herzl to the stubbornness of the anti-Ugandists ; the opposition
had killed him. I was handicapped in my efforts to widen my circle of

NEW START IN ENGLAND

95

acquaintances by my ignorance of the language; and most of my so-
called Zionist friends, captured by the idea of a great Jewish State in
Uganda, gave me the cold shoulder. At that time they were still awaiting
a report on the offered territory ; but they were certain that it would be
good: otherwise, they argued, the offer would never have been made.
I was helpless in the face of such naivete.

My isolation grew deeper and more complete, and I came to the con-
clusion that in the circumstances the best thing I could do was to keep
away from the unpleasant and unprofitable strife which was being waged
around ideas which meant little or nothing to me. This state of mind
was the determining factor in my choice of a provincial city in which to
begin my work. I was more determined than ever to keep out of Zionist
politics for a time, to be by myself and to devote myself to study and
thought. I felt instinctively that if I stayed in London I should be
dragged, against my will, into the vortex of futile discussion.

I picked Manchester as my place of exile — ^for exile it really was.
I was no longer a youngster — I was in my thirtieth year. I had achieved
some standing both in the academic world and in public life. Manchester
was to be a complete if temporary eclipse. I was beginning all over
again. No job was waiting for me. The best I could look forward to was
the privilege of a small laboratory in the university, for which I would
pay. The rest would depend on my work — ^and my luck.

In Manchester I knew just one person, Joseph Massel, the Zionist,
who was a printer by trade and a Hebrew poet by avocation, and he
turned out to be a veritable angel. He met me at the station, when I
arrived on an August bank holiday, and took me to his house, a dark,
moth-eaten place, half of which was occupied by his printing plant. But
it was a sweet, wholesome Jewish home, and during my first few months
in Manchester my Friday evenings with the Massels were the highlights
of my life. It was Massel, again, who found lodgings for me near the
university, and who introduced me to Charles Dreyfus, the chairman
of the Zionist group in Manchester, and director of the Clayton Aniline
Works, where I later obtained part-time employment as research worker.

Two factors entered into my choice of Manchester. It was a big
center of the chemical industry, and it possessed a great university, the
chemical school of which, familiar to me from scientific literature, had
a particularly high reputation. And I had, among my letters of intro-
duction, one to Professor William Henry Perkin, of Manchester Uni-
versity.

It was Professor Graebe, of Geneva, who had given me this letter, and
here again I cannot help pausing on the curious way in which the strands
of my life have been woven together. It so happened that the work I had
been doing under Graebe had been on similar lines to that which the
father of Professor Perkin, Sir William Henry Perkin, had done

TRIAL AND ERROR

9 ^

nearly half a century before* Very few people know that it was an
Englishman— namely William Henry Perkin— who was the founder of
the coal-tar dye industry. As a boy of eighteen he had produced, chemi-
cally, the coloring matter which subsequently became known as aniline
blue, or mauve — and which, incidentally, gave its name to the ''mauve
decade.'' It was Germany, however, in that tremendous expansion of
her industries which accompanied the dream of world conquest, which
exploited the discovery. Of the manner in which Germany and her
imperialism crossed the path of my Zionist and scientific interests I shall
have much more to say later. Here, at any rate, was another premonitory
contact, to which I paid little attention at the time. I only knew that
Professor Perkin was rather touched that I should have been working
in the same field as his father, and perhaps his kindness to me was due
primarily to this quite fortuitous sentimental factor. Whatever the
reason, I was very warmly received. As a former pupil of Adolph von
Bayer, of Munich, Perkin spoke an excellent German, He kept me in
conversation for about an hour, inquired into my work, explained the
mechanism of the Manchester Chemical School, and immediately ar-
ranged to let me have the use of a laboratory, for which I was to pay a
fee of six pounds. Then he said good-by! He was leaving for his holiday,
and he paused long enough to describe, with happy anticipation, the
villages and inns in the Dolomites which he intended to visit. He shook
hands with me and left, accompanied by my warmest gratitude and
keenest envy.

The six pounds I had to pay for the laboratory made a considerable
hole in my resources ; and when I paid the money to the bursar I made
an unspoken vow : "This is the last you get out of me." I had saved up
a little in Geneva out of my patent royalties ; and I had a small income
— think it was ten pounds a month — ^from the Baku oil man, Shrirow
(the same one who had provided the funds for the disastrous experiment
with Zvi Aberson) for whom I was doing some research. But that was
not going to last very long. It was therefore with a high spirit of de-
termination that I plunged into my work.

The beginning was not encouraging. The laboratory in which Pro-
fessor Perkin had bidden me make myself at home was a dingy basement
room which had evidently not been used for many months. It was dark,
grimy and covered with many layers of dust and soot; the necessary
accommodations were there, but a great deal of cleaning and rearranging
had to be done before it could be made habitable. As far as I could see,
I was alone in the building, and I had no idea where to find the para-
phernalia to fit up a laboratory. The first thing I did was to set to work
to scrub the tables, clean the taps and wash up the dirty apparatus
which stood about in picturesque disorder. This occupied my first day.
It was not exactly a scientific occupation, but it kept my thoughts busy

NEW START IN ENGLAND 97

till evening when, very tired, and suffering from housemaid’s knee, I
stumbled back to my lodgings.

The following morning I returned very early to the laboratory, and
to my great joy found it inhabited by another living being. This was
Edwards, the chief steward of the laboratories, an all-powerful person
who was responsible not only for the charwomen and lab boys, but
also for all chemical and glass stores. I realized at once that here was,
from my point of view, the most important man in the place. He did not
look at all like the laboratory stewards I had known in Berlin and
Geneva; he was perhaps more like a churchwarden; anyhow, he was
unctuous and exceedingly polite, his language always cautious and
diplomatic. Unfortunately, our conversations in the early days were
rather slow and disconnected, since my English was practically non-
existent and he knew no other language. The first morning I spoke
with pencil and paper, drawing for him most of the apparatus I wanted.
I also wrote out the formulae of the chemicals. He brought me an
English chemistry textbook, and going through it I pointed to the pic-
tures, and he was kind enough to read out to me several passages. In
this way we got on tolerably well, and by the end of the morning I had
collected a fairly good outfit and had been given access to the Holy of
Holies — ^the storeroom where the fine chemicals I needed for my work
were kept. Edwards also placed at my disposal a lab boy. His language,
too, was entirely incomprehensible to me, but he possessed a peculiar
gift which I had never encoimtered before : he had learned how to play
football with every piece of apparatus which came into his hands. He
was something of an artist in this way, and could kick pieces of glass-
ware about without actually smashing them. He never handed me any-
thing in the ordinary way, but was forever performing some sleight of
hand, either throwing the piece of apparatus up into the air and catch-
ing it, or slinging it at a nicely calculated angle to fall on a definite spot
on my desk. But he was kindly and jolly. He talked mostly with his
hands, and at the top of his voice, being probably under the impression
that the more loudly one speaks the more easily the foreigner under-
stands.

Tom proved to be a great asset, and did well by me, even showing an
inclination to procure various luxuries for my laboratory. Thus, without
any prompting from me, he produced some matting for the stone floor,
and gave me an elaborate explanation — mostly by gesticulation — to the
effect that every worker in tiiis room had invariably finished up with
rheumatism, so that the matting was an essential prerequisite for one’s
bodily welfare. He also expressed the hope that I would not be staying
long in this room, but would stortly be moved upstairs. Foreign gentle-
men usually began in the basement, but if they did well they went up.
I took careful note of Tom’s wise remarks, which were based on wide

TRIAL AND ERROR

9 ^

experience and careful observation. He went on to give me, in his
sketchy way, some characteristics of the dramatis personae in the lab-
oratories, so that when they arrived I might find them more or less
familiar. Tom was blessed with remarkable common sense and receptive-
ness; he was a keen and reliable observer of the people around him.
We soon became firm friends, so much so that he repeatedly offered to
^'pinch^' some special chemical for me from the stores not accessible to
ordinary mortals. I did my best to discourage this idea, because I
thought it was still too early for me to embark on attempts of this kind.
But Tom did not quite agree with me. Everybody did it, he said; and
it wasn't really “pinching'' because of course you could always sign a
receipt for any chemical you took. It appeared that every worker in
the labs had his own little private store of chemicals laid up in his own
special hiding place; it saved their running around and wasting time;
and anyway, explained Tom, it was always well to be prepared.

I fitted myself out as best I could, and in company with my lab boy,
set up my first experiments. ... It had been a rather difficult beginning,
but the creation of a laboratory in a strange town, especially during
vacation, when the place is half dead, and in the hands of charwomen,
plumbers and workmen of all kinds, is usually a heartbreaking task.
Mine was made easier by the consistent kindheartedness which I en-
countered from the workmen around me. Not only were they most con-
siderate in not invading my quarters at inconvenient times, but they
showed great sympathy, tried to supply me with whatever information
I needed, and spared no effort to produce any piece of apparatus or
furniture that I asked for.

I settled down to work, and while my experiments were cooling or
simmering I had ample time to yield myself up to contemplation of the
world around me. My thoughts wandered toward the future, and then
swung back to the past. What struck me first was the profound differ-
ence between the turbulent years I had left behind me and the placid
and peaceful atmosphere of this basement laboratory in Manchester.
But I did not let my mind run idle for too long. From the first week
on I spent several hours a day in the systematic study of English. I
learned whole pages of my chemistry textbook by heart. The technical
language was fairly easy to follow, but what I did to the pronunciation,
reading aloud to myself, is now beyond my imagination. However, I
must have made some progress, for I found myself gradually opening
up lines of communication with my fellow-workers in the laboratory
building.

About SIX weeks passed in this way. I lived, except for the contacts
I have mentioned, almost incommunicado. I used to bring my lunch to
the lab and work solidly from nine o'clock in the morning till seven or

NEW START IN ENGLAND

99

eight at night, or even later; and I continued to fill in my time with
the reading of chemical textbooks and articles in chemical reviews.

With this almost complete absence of distraction, my work progressed
rather well, and when Professor Perkin returned, about six or seven
weeks after our first interview, I was glad to have something to show
him. He seemed pleased, and was most encouraging; he placed at my
disposal two research men, whom I could employ on special subjects.
They were not the best men available, but they were pleasant people
and willing workers. Later I had as my assistant a young demonstrator
by the name of Pickles, a Lancashire boy with a massive northern
accent. He was an extremely likable fellow, whose only defect was his
illusion that he could speak German.

I have special reason to remember the first work I did in England,
for in a curious way it came up again in scientific circles after a lapse
of over three decades. The subject is perhaps not without interest for
the general reader. We established a reaction between magnesium
organic compounds and phthalic anhydrides, leading to a new class of
compounds which in turn can be converted into derivatives of anthra-
cene, the basis of certain important dyestuffs. The scientific value of the
discovery lay in the fact that the chemical structure of the anthracene
derivatives so produced was, unlike those produced by previous methods,
unambiguous. Nothing much was done with our method until the
thirties, when research work on synthetic carcinogenous (cancer-pro-
ducing) substances set in, prompted by the discovery that coal tar
owes its carcinogenic action on the skin to the presence of a hydrocarbon
which is also an anthracene derivative and can be made synthetically.
This aroused interest in methods for the synthesis of such somewhat
complicated hydrocarbons, and with the group of my co-workers which
formed the Rehovoth team (concerning which I shall have much to tell
later) in Palestine, we made investigations in greater detail and ex-
tended our earlier observations in various directions. In the hands of
Professor Fieser of Harvard, and his pupils, our method became a
valuable tool in their well-known research on the relations between
molecular structure and cancer-producing activity. Professor Dufraisse
of Paris made use of our reaction for his studies on photo-oxidation,
and actually investigated a number of new substances which we sent
him from Rehovoth.

There was one brief interruption in my work of which I shall teU
later. The term began at the university, and my laboratory was enlivened
from time to time by invasions of young students and senior research
men. I began to make the acquaintance of my colleagues. By this time
I was speaking English of a sort, and my relations with the college
folk were such as to make me desire to stay in the laboratory and
become part of their world. Indeed I cherished this ambition, but I

100 TRIAL AND ERROR

was so far from dreaming that it could come true that I did not speak
of it to anyone.

Three months had passed, and I was face to face with the problem
of how to continue my existence in Manchester. My savings and my
income from Shrirow had given out. I reflected that if there was any-
thing at all in my secret ambition, a year or two at least would have
to pass before it could be realized and I would be given employment in
the school of chemistry. I was at an impasse.

Two things happened, almost simultaneously, to resolve my diffi-
culties. First, Charles Dre3rfus invited me to do some research for his
firm. It was a type of work that would not interfere with my college
program, and in fact I would not have to leave my laboratory, to which
I had by now become very much attached. After obtaining the permis-
sion of Professor Perkin, I agreed to combine the two duties, and in
this wise obtained the bare minimum required to support me in Man-
chester. So, from November 1904 on, I was more or less secure from
the material point of view. My budget was a very modest one; it did
not exceed £3. a week, all told — Aboard, lodging, laboratory expenses,
books, everything. I even had a small sum to send my sister who had
just begun her studies in Zurich.

I was so engrossed in my work that, had it not been for my weekly
visit to the Massels, I would never have known any other street than
the one which led from my lodgings to the college. I was living with a
Jewish family on Cecil Street — ^the Levys, who had probably originated
on Cheetham Hill, but who pretended to have nothing to do with it.
In fact they pretended to know nothing about the Jewish community
generally, and to be entirely innocent of Yiddish. I had my suspicions
regarding the accent of the older members of the family, but it was
hinted to me that it was Australian; my knowledge of English did not
extend to the niceties of colonial pronunciation so I could not challenge
the claim. However, they were kindly people, and made me feel at home
with them. I saw little of them for I went out early in the morning,
and came home late. My room was never invaded by members of the
family, and I could live alone with my books, my letters and my
thoughts.

I was slowly accustoming myself to Manchester life. My greatest
difficulty was with the fogs, which depressed me terribly. They seemed
always to be thickest in my basement laboratory ; my eyes suffered and
I was tormented by a permanent cold. Tom thought that such colds
could be cured by inhaling chemical fumes, but though I thought highly
of Tom’s worldly wisdom I did not feel I could extend this good opinion
to his medical knowledge, and I declined his advice. Toward Christmas
I found myself feeling unusually tired and depressed. I was overworked ;
I was homesick for my European surroundings; I was cut off from

NEW START IN ENGLAND

lOl

Zionist work ; and I had seen my fiancee only once since my departure
from Geneva. And then, with complete unexpectedness came my second
stroke of good fortune, and my gloom was dispelled miraculously by a
conversation I had with my professor just before we parted for the
Christmas vacation (he went away, I stayed in Manchester) ; he said
that when the next term began I might try to deliver a weekly lecture
on some branch of chemistry with which I was most familiar; and he
urged me not to be discouraged by the linguistic difficulties I would
experience in the beginning. He himself, he said, had passed through
this stage when he delivered his first lectures in a German university.
He would advise his senior men to come to my lectures, and I would
find them, he assured me, ‘'well behaved.’’ He also suggested that he
would propose my name for a research scholarship, to begin with the
year.

I was in heaven.

I devoted the entire three weeks of the Christmas vacation to the
preparation of my lectures, and in January 1905, I delivered my first
lecture on chemistry in English. I went into the lecture theater with a
beating heart. I was used to public speaking. I had addressed large
audiences in many towns in Russia, Switzerland and Germany ; but no
political speech I ever delivered, no matter how important and critical
the issue, has ever affected me as deeply as this first lecture at an
English university. I did not yet know the English students. In the
short time I had spent in Manchester I had had little opportunity of
getting near them. They seemed to me, from a distance, to be terribly
young, and terribly boisterous. I thought that they took their studies
less seriously than the heavy-weight German students to whom I was
accustomed. They made an impression of flippancy and superficiality.
In all this, I discovered, I was seriously mistaken.

When I came into the lecture theater they received me with a friend-
liness which encouraged me to put my case before them as well as I
could. I was a foreigner, I said, and had been in the country only a few
months; I was consequently at their mercy. I would do my best, but
I would certainly perpetrate many howlers. They could make all the
jokes they wanted at my expense — rafter the lecture. The effect of this
little introductory appeal was remarkable. They listened to the lecture
with the closest attention; when the hour was over, they did not leave
the theater, but stayed on and surrounded me, putting a great many
questions to me which showed they had understood the main points of
the lecture, and were genuinely interested. So the first ordeal passed
triumphantly ; the next lecture, a week later, was already routine.

When about a month bad passed Professor Perkin suggested that I
take a special tutorial class in connection with his own lectures on
organic chemistry. I jumped at the offer, and again put my best into

102

TRIAL AND ERROR

the preparation. The ''tuts,’^ which were voluntary and informal, be-
came very popular. Between these and my regular lectures I found
myself in intimate contact with the students, and the experience was one
of the finest I can look back on. We established a cordial relationship
from the outset, but I did not hesitate to subject my students to a
discipline and a schedule of work to which they were not at all ac-
customed. I insisted on great cleanliness in the laboratory — not an
easy thing to achieve under local climatic conditions, aggravated as they
were by the smoke of many factories. I insisted also on neat records. I
followed up the work of each student, having set myself the ambition
of taking over the whole course in organic chemistry. I concentrated,
in particular, on the seminars, which I tried to make as . interesting as
possible, introducing material that did not appear in the textbooks. I
watched my men. I used to tell the class that if a man worked well
during the year, but did badly in the examinations, it would not weigh
much with me, and he could depend on me to defend him before the
visiting examiners. On the other hand, if a bad student happened, by
fluke, to do well in the examination, he could count only on the strict
minimum of credit. These Lancashire students, who had a keen sense
of justice, agreed with me tacitly, and after a sojourn of a year or two
in Manchester, I was completely at home with them.

A curious incident out of those days, in no way connected with my
student contacts, comes to my mind, shedding an indirect light on the
spirit of hospitality which was the pride of Manchester University. I
arrived in England at the height of the Russo-Japanese War, and
shortly after Perkin's return from Europe a Japanese student was sent
to share my basement lab. He took me for a Russian, and was, of
course, very careful to allude neither to the war nor its causes. Now
and again he would bring a newspaper into the lab; so would 1. We
read the war reports with close attention, and when we discussed —
each in his own variety of English — ^the day's news, it was always in
relation to some quite trivial incident. Listening to us, you would have
thought the war did not exist. In actual fact we were both rejoicing
in the progress of events — but for different reasons. I saw in this
wretched war the possibility of the discrediting of czarlsni, perhaps
even its overthrow. The Jap was an ardent patriot and prayed silently
for the triumph of his country's arms. When the news of the battle of
Psuschima, in which the Russian armada was completely annihilated,
was reported, we sat at opposite ends of the laboratory, each eagerly
devouring the special edition of the evening papers. The Jap could no
longer contain his feelings : after he had finished reading, he came over
and silently pressed my hand in condolence. I was fully aware of the
misunderstanding, but my English was not equal to an explanation. I

NEW START IN ENGLAND

103

accepted his sympathy in silence and went on with my work. We never
got round to a discussion of the war.

A few months later I was astounded to read in the Annual Report
of the Director of Laboratories a paragraph referring proudly to the
international character of the Manchester Chemical School, and rejoic-
ing over the unifying influence of science which bridged the gulf be-
tween nation and nation, and made it possible for a Japanese and a
Russian to work side by side during the tragic period of the Russo-
Japanese War. It was not until some years later that I felt able to
explain to my acquaintances what my real feelings had been about the
Russian defeats.

Parallel with this process of adjustment to English university life
there was going on in me a deep inner struggle round the repression of
my Zionist activities — a repression which was only partial at best.
The perpetual problem of '"the proper course of action’^ returned to
haunt me. Here I was, quietly ensconced in Manchester, pursuing an
academic career, while ^"over there,” in the Zionist world, in the Jewish
world, in the world at large, issues clamored for attention. In Septem-
ber 1904, before Professor Perkin returned from his vacation, I inter-
rupted my work to make a dash for Vienna, where the Actions Com-
mittee held its first meeting after the death of Herzl. It was a depressing
affair; the helplessness of those on whom the leadership had devolved
was painfully obvious. The best they seemed to hope for was some
sort of an attempt to keep in existence the work which had been ini-
tiated by the departed leader. I saw some of my old Zionist friends on
this trip, and, of course, I saw my fiancee. I returned to Manchester
with my sense of frustration deepened. Letters continued to reach me,
describing the condition of the movement abroad. I was out of things.
The fact that I had, in a sense, planned this did not make the condition
more acceptable.

I had little affinity with the Zionists in England, who were still con-
centrating, for the larger part, on the possibilities of LFganda. Many
of them even thought that if Uganda was found to be unsuitable then
all we had to do was start looking for another territory. Only a few
still adhered to those tenets which were the soul of the movement.
Zionism as such was in a state of stagnation, and Zionist activity was
limited to the usual cliches and claptrap performances of Jewish societies
in English provincial towns. I felt no incentive to associate myself with
this sort of thing. Moreover, I was still regarded with suspicion as an
opponent of the views being propagated by the leaders in London. In
one way then, it was not hard for me to hold myself aloof; but the
discouragement from the outside did nothing to lessen my own feeling
of isolation and futility.

My first contact with the Manchester Zionist Society of those days

104

TRIAL AND ERROR

was rather disastrous. I went with my friend Massel to a meeting for
which there had been announced a lecture by a man called Belisha. The
title of the lecture was: ‘'Stray Observations of a Wandering Jew.” I
thought I would meet in the lecturer a fellow-wanderer who had per-
haps gone through much the same experiences as myself before my
arrival in England. To my utter astonishment and dismay, the wander-
ings of the lecturer proved to have covered nothing more than a trip
from London to Brussels. He described in great detail how he had
bought his ticket at Cooks’, how he had crossed the Channel, how he had
landed at Calais, and how he had traveled on to Brussels. I listened
patiently, waiting at least for some description of the Jews and Jewish
life he had met on his very brief pilgrimage. My patience was not re-
warded even to this limited extent. Only toward the end of his paper
did the speaker mention, quite casually, a synagogue in Brussels, which
he had visited and found wanting. I failed to see what all this talk had
to do with Jews or Jewish wanderings, and was puzzled to find a room-
ful of people listening with deference to the speaker, and apparently
taking his remarks as real spiritual sustenance for Zionists.

At the conclusion of the meeting, the chairman was inspired by
someone — probably my friend Massel — to call on me to move a vote of
thanks. I was too new to the country and its usages to know what this
meant — namely, that I was expected to approve the lecture, and add a
number of compliments. I only realized that I was being asked to say
something, and I took my responsibility literally and seriously. I felt
that the lecture had been, in intellectual content, beneath criticism, and
I gave vent to my feelings in no uncertain terms. The consternation of
the good Zionists of Manchester may be better imagined than described.
I had committed something worse than a fauji" pas ; I had confirmed all
the evil reports which were current about me as an obstreperous fellow,
a natural rebel and a born obstructionist. It took me months to live
the incident down.

The setback only served to convince me that sustained abstention
from Zionist work was psychologically impossible for me. I went back
to my laboratory and my classes, but the pressure of events, or rather of
their report, broke in on my academic retreat, destroyed my peace of
mind, and finished by paralyzing my scientific work. My new English
acquaintances sometimes spoke of Russia with me ; but they spoke of it
as of a curiosity, a survival from a past quite inconceivable to them,
with which they had no real concern. I never liked these conversations ;
for to me all these questions were matters, of bitter and intimate con-
cern, to my friends they were abstract subjects for discussion. It was
apparently impossible for them to realize that these were things affect-
ing vitally the everyday life of people like themselves — their contem-
poraries in another country.

NEW START IN ENGLAND

105

My hatred of the Russian regime grew as I contrasted life in Russia
with life in England, where freedom of speech and thought were things
taken for granted, like the air one breathed.^The hopes which were born
of the impending defeat of Russia made it harder for me than ever to
bear with my self-imposed exile from public affairs. A great struggle
was going on over there ; the will of the Russian people was beginning
to manifest itself, a desperate and tottering bureaucracy was striking
back with the last remnants of its forces. The people emerged with a
partial victory. A parliament (with very limited powers, it is true, but
still a parliament) was brought into being, and if its legislative actions
were canceled by imperial ukases, at least a tribune had been created
from which the Russian people could address the world. We naturally
hoped that in the fundamental changes which were taking place, Jewry,
which had given its full share to the toll of victims in the struggle,
would also receive its share of the benefits. Perhaps the era of savage
oppressions was over, perhaps the intolerable laws which hedged in
the life of the Jewish community would be rescinded. All these hopes
were doomed to disappointment. A few Jewish deputies were elected
to the Duma, and there they had the opportunity of speaking up on
behalf of the inarticulate millions which they represented. But the
Russian-Imperial Government had already chosen the path which was
to lead, a decade later, to its irretrievable ruin. The Revolution was
liquidated amid Jewish pogroms; the Duma was repressed, the ancient
tyranny returned.

These bloody developments had a direct bearing on the character of
the Zionist movement. At first they had resulted in the panic mood
which had expressed itself in the Uganda and other territorial proposals.
As the utter impracticability of Uganda was revealed, the deeper
strength of Zionism reasserted itself. The movement was more than a
relief organization; it was the source of endurance of the Jewish people.
During the preponderance of the Herzlian view, Palestine had been
merely an incidental part of the plan; now it was beginning to be
realized that the cementing of an intimate bond between the movement
and Palestine was in itself a source of moral comfort, hope and rehabili-
tation. The stage was being set for the resolution of the conflict between
''political Zionism” and "practical Zionism.” The actual synthesis did
not take place for some years, but the change of heart in the Zionists
was beginning — ^and it was this that made possible my gradual resump-
tion of activities.

The Manchester Zionist Society abandoned their "syllabus,” as they
called it (it was a hodgepodge of random subjects covered by random
speakers) in favor of a more serious program of lectures on Zionism
and Zionist aspirations. The change attracted numbers of the younger
members of the community, who for the first time heard something of

io6 TRIAL AND ERROR

real Jewish life. As my anti-Ugandist sins and my shocking fau.r pas
at the Belisha lecture receded into the background, I ceased to be the
sinister figure of my early Manchester days. I was invited to speak at
the Zionist Society. I answered questions, I encouraged discussion; it
was discovered that the exchange of views was interesting as well as
instructive.

Slowly Manchester became a center of Zionist thought which was
destined, after months and years of laborious effort, to spread its in-
fluence through the surrounding towns and to leave its impress on
English Zionism as a whole. The details of this growth belong to later
pages of this story. They were bound up, natui'ally, with a gradual
extension of my contacts. I found out that Manchester was not the
Jewish intellectual wilderness I had imagined it to be. I formed many
friendships there, friendships which were not only of a personal chai*-
acter, but which grew into lifelong comradeship in Zionist work. I
met, soon after my arrival, Charles Dreyfus, who was the chairman of
the Manchester Zionist Society. About that time I also became ac-
quainted with Harry Sacher, who was then beginning his distinguished
career in journalism and law, and who was to play an important role
in the Zionist movement. Simon Marks and Israel Sieff, who have
rendered long years of service to Zionism, came into the orbit of the
movement some years later. Of these friends I shall speak again.

The beginnings of my integration with English Zionism belong to
the 1905 to 1906 period. One fortuitous circumstance helped to make
that transition time easier for me: Achad Ha-am came to live in Lon-
don, and though journeys to London were luxuries I could ill afford,
I managed now and then to go down and spend a week end with him
in his modest house in Hampstead.

I had known Achad Ha-am for many years, first as a name, then
personally when I was a student in Berlin, and later in occasional con-
tacts. He had been one of the formative forces in my early life. Now
he became, though nearly twenty years my senior, a friend, and I ob-
served at closer range this personality which has left such a mark on
the Jewish thought of the last generation. It has often been thrown up
to me that I have not been as critical of Achad Ha-am as of the other
Zionist personalities. The truth is that I thought of him always as the
philosopher, not as the man of action. A music critic docs not have to
play an instimment, but his criticism is not the less valid. I did not
expect from Achad Ha-am what I expected from Herzl ; my approach
was altogether different.

In the days when I, as little more than a youth, had already become
critical of Herzl and the “Western*' outlook on Zionism, I felt myself
particularly drawn toward Achad Ha-am. He, the clear thinker and
mature man, understood the significance of the cleavage between East

NEW START IN ENGLAND

107

and West better than I, though he carried his distrust too far; for he
attended only the first Zionist Congress, and could never be induced
to attend another. If there were some who acclaimed Herzl with un-
critical and unbalanced enthusiasm, Achad Ha-am was overcautious in
his appraisal of the man and of the instrument he had created, the
Congress. At the first festive gathering in Basle, he sat (as he reported
later) “like a mounier at a wedding.” He trembled for the moral values
of the movement. Jewish dignity, Jewish freedom, Jewish self-emanci-
pation, were not to be won by public demonstrations, but by inner
discipline and self-mastery. As he had criticized the “Lovers of Zion”
and the administration of the Rothschild colonies in Palestine, so he
criticized the Congress for what he thought was the essential emptiness
of its program.

The Zionist movement stood for a time under the double sign of
Herzl and Achad Ha-am. There was Herzlian Zionism, with its great
political vistas and its deferment of the practical work; there was the
Zionism of Achad Ha-am, concentrating on the qualitative progress of
the resettlement in Palestine. It was only in later years that the two
views were synthesized, and much of my thought and work was given
to the achievement of this synthesis. But as between the two men, there
had always been a feeling of mutual respect. Achad Ha-am was imper-
sonal and impartial in his criticism; he was guided by a deep-rooted
intellectual probity; and the Russian Zionists in particular took his
strictures to heart.

On the personal side, Achad Ha-am was of a quiet, reserved and
retiring nature. Though primarily a thinker he had a strong streak of
practicality; the great tea firm of Wissotzky had sent him to London
to manage the English branch, and he did this extremely well. Very
certainly Wissotzky would not otherwise have employed him. With all
his high qualities, or because of them, Achad Ha-am was modest, and
had an aversion to the limelight. His pen name, Achad Ha-am — “One of
the People” — ^was chosen without affectation. In his habits as in his
systematic thinking, he was exact to the point of pedantry. I remember
how, on one occasion, he was two minutes late for an appointment with
us, and was so distressed that I had to assure him that our watches
were wrong by exactly two minutes.

I have never understood why this self-effacing individual was singled
out by the anti-Semites as the leader of that mysterious and melo-
dramatic conspiracy which goes under the name of “The Elders of
Zion.” They were forever alluding to “Usher Ginsburg,” the man
behind the sinister Jewish plot for world domination. Perhaps it was
because the famous “Protocols” started somewhere in south Russia,
and Achad Ha-am was the secretary of the old Odessa Committee for
Palestine in the days of the Chibath Zion. Whatever the reason, a more

io8

TRIAL AND ERROR

absurd juxtaposition surely never existed than the one between the
archplotter against Western civilization who was supposed to head
“The Elders of Zion/* and the academic and rather prim little man
whose mind was filled with philosophic concepts, and who never
meddled in non- Jewish affairs. But then, it may be rather absurd on my
part to look for rhyme or reason in the weird workings of the anti-
Semitic mind.

CHAPTER 8

Taking Root

My First Meeting with Arthur James Baljour — Marriage —
Doubling in Science and Zionism — Our Older Son Is Born —
My Wife Doubles in Housekeeping and Medicine — Zangwill
and Territorialism — Working the Provincial Communities —
Manchester University — Arthur Schuster — Samuel Alexander
— Ernest Rutherford — The Great City of Manchester.

Perhaps this is the best point to enter into the record a memor-
able encounter which symbolized for me the far-off beginnings of a
new chapter in the relationship between England and Zionism. It also
has a special place in my life. It was about this time that I had resumed
my Zionist activities in the new and limited setting of Manchester and
the English provinces; and the meeting with Arthur James Balfour
has set a stamp on the entire period.

Charles Dreyfus, whom I have mentioned as managing director of
the Clayton Aniline Works, and chairman of the Manchester Zionist
Society, was also a member of the Manchester Town Council and chair-
man of the Conservative party in Manchester. In spite of the fact that
he was an ardent Ugandist, and was forever arguing the issue with me,
we developed friendly relations which lasted many years — in fact, until
his death, which occurred at a very advanced age. Early in 1906 a
general election took place in England, and Balfour was chosen to con-
test the Clayton division of North Manchester. In the midst of the con-
fusion and hullabaloo of the campaign Balfour, at Dreyfus’ suggestion,
consented to receive me. He was interested in meeting one of the Jews
who had fought against the acceptance of the Uganda offer, made by
his Government. That I was anxious to meet Balfour goes without
saying. Dreyfus’ interest in the matter was to have Balfour convince
me that I had been wrong in my attitude; it did not occur to him that
the upshot of the interview would be in the contrary sense.

I was brought in to Balfour in a room in the old-fashioned Queen’s
Hotel, on Piccadilly, which served as his headquarters. The corridors
were crowded with people waiting for a word with the candidate. I
surmised that Mr. Balfour had consented to see me for a few minutes

109

1 10

TRIAL AND ERROR

— ''a quarter of an hour/’ Dreyfus warned me — simply to break the
monotony of his routine. He kept me for well over an hour.

I had been less than two years in the country, and my English was
still not easy to listen to. I remember how Balfour sat in his usual pose,
his legs stretched out in front of him, an imperturbable expression on
his face. We plunged at once into the subject of our interview. He
asked me why some Jews, Zionists, were so bitterly opposed to the
Uganda offer. The British Goveimment was really anxious to do some-
thing to relieve the misery of the Jews; and the problem w’-as a practical
one, calling for a practical approach. In reply I plunged into what I
recall as a long harangue on the meaning of the Zionist movement. I
dw'elt on the spiritual side of Zionism, I pointed out that nothing but a
deep religious conviction expressed in modern political terms could
keep the movement alive, and that this conviction had to be based on
Palestine and on Palestine alone. Any deflection from Palestine was —
well, a form of idolatry. I added that if Moses had come into the sixth
Zionist Congress when it was adopting the resolution in favor of the
Commission for Uganda, he would surely have broken the tablets once
again. We knew that the Uganda offer was well meant, and on the
surface it might appear the more practical road. But I was sure that —
quite apart from the availability and suitability of the territory — the
Jewish people would never produce either the money or the energy
required in order to build up a wasteland and make it habitable, unless
that land were Palestine. Palestine has this magic and romantic appeal
for the Jews; our history has been what it is because of our tenacious
hold on Palestine. We have never accepted defeat and have never for-
saken the memory of Palestine. Such a tradition could be converted
into real motive power, and we were trying to do just that, struggling
against great difficulties, but sure that the day would come when we
would succeed.

I looked at my listener, and suddenly became afraid that this appear-
ance of interest and courtesy might be nothing more than a mask. I
remember that I was sweating blood and I tried to find some less
ponderous way of expressing myself. I was ready to bow myself out
of the room, but Balfour held me back, and put some questions to me
regarding the growth of the movement. He had heard of '^Dr. Herz” —
a very distinguished leader, who had founded and organized it. I ven-
tured to correct him, pointing out that Herzl had indeed placed the
movement on a new footing, and had given the tradition a modern
political setting; but Herzl had died young; and he had left us this
legacy of Uganda, which we were trying to liquidate.

Then suddenly I said: ‘^Mr. Balfour, supposing I were to offer you
Paris instead of London, would you take it?’’

He sat up, looked at me, and answered: ‘‘But, Dr. Weizmann, we
have London.”

TAKING ROOT

111

'That is true/' I said. "But we had Jerusalem when London was a
marsh."

He leaned back, continued to stare at me, and said two things which
I remember vividly. The first was: "Are there many Jews who think
like you?"

I answered: "I believe I speak the mind of millions of Jews whom
you will never see and who cannot speak for themselves, but with
whom I could pave the streets of the country I come from."

To this he said : "If that is so, you will one day be a force."

Shortly before I withdrew, Balfour said: "It is curious. The Jews I
meet are quite different."

I answered: "Mr. Balfour, you meet the wrong kind of Jews."

Before I go on to tell of the more immediate consequences of this
interview, let me mention an odd episode which came like an echo, at
the end of three decades, to my last remark. Balfour was maintaining,
at the time of our meeting, a correspondence with Mrs. Leopold Roths-
child, the mother of Anthony and Lionel Rothschild, and soon after our
conversation he wrote her a letter in which he said: "I had a most
interesting conversation with a young Russian Jew, a lecturer at the
university." Now Mrs. Rothschild was a bitter anti-Zionist. When Mrs.
Blanche E. T. Dugdale, Balfour’s niece, who had become his literary
executrix, was collecting material for his biography, she wrote to Mrs.
Rothschild asking if she could use any of her uncle’s letters to her.
Mrs. Rothschild sent them all, with the exception of this one, which
her son read out to me — quite inadvertently, of course — after her death.
I had said to Balfour: "You meet the wrong kind of Jews." Of course,
I did not set eyes on the Rothschilds until years later.

I return to the narrative. The conversation with Balfour taught me
two important things. The first was that, in spite of years of Zionist
propaganda in England, both in the press and by word of mouth, a
leading British statesman like Mr. Balfour had only the most naive and
rudimentary notion of the movement. The second was that if someone
had beeif* found to present the case of Palestine to the British author-
ities, it would not have been difficult to enlist their sympathies and
perhaps, in certain circumstances, their active support. Mr. Dreyfus’
plan for my re-education had gone awry; for I was now more con-
vinced than ever that instead of going off on the wild goose chase that
was Uganda, we should have made our position clear to England from
the outset.

There followed a period in my life on which I look back with not
a little astonishment at my powers of physical endurance. At a time
when I undertook the responsibility of marriage, and when it was of
the utmost importance for me to establish myself firmly in my academic
career, I was drawn again into Zionist activity by my feeling that the
time was ripe for the thoroughgoing change in the character of the

112

TRIAL AND ERROR

movement. We were about to move beyond the Uganda deadpoint, and
I could no longer abstain from work. The conversation with Balfour —
about which I published nothing until many years later — ^was like a
tocsin or alarm. I was not free to choose my course of action.

I must, however, put developments more or less in their chronological
order.

My fiancee had stayed on in Geneva to complete her medical course.
In the summer of 1906 she graduated, returned to Rostov to visit her
family and obtain certain necessary marriage papers, and then came up
to Danzig, to meet me. We were married in the near-by townlet of
Zopott, with only four members of my family present, my father and
mother, my older brother Feivel and my sister Miriam. Immediately
after the marriage we went to Cologne, where a meeting of the Actions
Committee, under the chairmanship of David Wolff sohn, Herzhs suc-
cessor, was being held, and there, for a week, my young bride practically
lost sight of me.

The sessions of the Actions Committee were long and stormy. We —
that is, the younger group of the Democratic Fraction — were trying to
unseat Wolff sohn, whom we considered unfit for the Presidency. He
was a well-meaning and devoted Zionist, generous and hard working,
but without personality or vision. He did his best to imitate his idol,
Herzl, but he had neither Herzl’s personality nor his organizing ability.
At bottom Wolff sohn was a businessman, and his passion was the Zion-
ist bank — ^the Jewish Colonial Trust. He looked upon us younger men
as something like desperadoes, quite unfit to be entrusted with responsi-
bilities. We got him out somewhat later, and substituted for the Pres-
idency a general Presidium, or Council, with Professor Otto Warburg
as chairman.

But concerning those Cologne sessions I remember chiefly my wife's
extraordinary patience and understanding, and my feelings of guilt.
I remember coming home — to the hotel, that is — at five o’clock one
morning, with a great bouquet of flowers and a basket of peaches as a
peace offering. It wasn’t necessary, but it made me feel a littfe better.
Such was our honeymoon.

When the sessions of the Actions Committee closed, we took a trip
down the Rhine to Switzerland, spent a week there, and returned to
Manchester. We arrived at Victoria Station late one night, with one
shilling in our possession. During the last hour of the trip we debated
whether we ought to spend the shilling on sandwiches or try to get a
cab to the lodgings which I had arranged for before leaving Manchester.
Fortunately we were met at the station by a friend of mine, a chemist
from the Clayton Works, so we had the sandwiches and the cab.

The first autumn and winter in Manchester was a really horrid time
for my wife. My choice of lodgings had not been a very fortunate one.

TAKING ROOT

113

The landlady was a slattern, who spent the whole day with curling pins
in her hair, reading detective novels. The house was dirty, the food
tasteless, the surroundings indescribably drab and dismal. Most of the
time my wife was alone; I stayed late in the laboratory, and when I
did have a free evening I was as likely as not to devote it to a Zionist
meeting. The wives of my colleagues were extraordinarily kind to us,
but in my wife’s case there was, as there had been for me at the begin-
ning, the barrier of language. Here she was, in a gloomy, foggy north-
ern city, cut off from the world she had known, and married to a
struggling young scientist who had, as a sideline, a full-time political
interest. I recall that winter with something less than pleasure.

The period that followed saw a gradual improvement. In the spring,
when we were expecting our first child, we moved to a tiny house on
Birchfield Road. This was quite a desperate undertaking. My salary
at the university was, I think, about two hundred and fifty pounds a
year then (twelve hundred and fifty dollars). I was earning another
hundred and fifty a year as research chemist for the Clayton Works.
But of this total I was sending an average of two pounds a week to
two sisters and a brother who were now studying in Zurich. To furnish
our home — ^which we did on the installment plan — I undertook the
marking of chemistry papers for Oxford, Cambridge and South Ken-
sington colleges. The payment was a shilling for the lower papers,
half a crown for the higher papers. I had to mark one thousand papers
to pay off Kendal Milne’s, the furniture dealers; and it was stone-
breaking, heartbreaking work. I did it at odd hours, day or night, very
often with my new-born son, Benjy, on my lap. I held him there partly
out of affection and partly to give my wife an occasional rest. Now and
again he set up a great wailing, as infants will, and I can only hope
that I was never driven to do any injustice to my unfortunate ex-
aminees.

My wife began her duties as housekeeper and mother under great
handicaps. She had taken a brilliant medical degree, she spoke four
languages, she played the piano excellently, but having left home in her
early youth to pursue her medical studies, she knew nothing at all of
housekeeping. She likes to recall how, one morning, the maid came in
and announced that the butcher was at the door. ''What does he want?”
she asked. "He wants to know what you want,” answered the maid.
‘'I want meat,” was Mrs. Weizmann’s reply. It did not occur to her
that one had to specify the animal and the anatomical section of the
animal.

However, she learned quickly, in part with the help of two minister-
ing angels. The first was Mrs. Benfey, the wife of a colleague of mine
at the Clayton Works, and the second was Mrs. Schuster, the wife of
Professor (afterward Sir) Arthur Schuster, one of my senior professors.

114 TRIAL AND ERROR

of whom I shall have more to tell Mrs. Schuster took a tremendous
liking to my wife. She admired her spirit, her charm and her ability.
In particular she was rather astonished that a young woman who had
taken her medical degree at a European university should be both beauti-
ful and smart.

Before long our house became organized, simply, modestly and in the
fine taste that was innate with my wife. We were able to receive as well
as to pay visits. My income grew slowly. Our son was a great source of
joy to us, and in time we were able to engage a nurse, so that my wife
could resume her studies. That was in 1909, and in 1911 she graduated,
and obtained a position as medical officer for a number of city clinics
and municipal schools for mothers, under the direction of the health
officer, Dr. Niven, a senior wi'angler, a man of high intelligence and
advanced views. By then we were solidly settled ; my income at the
university had risen to six hundred a year, my wife was making three
hundred and fifty, and together with some other earnings we had about
a thousand a year between us, a considerable sum in those days. We
were in clover. Out of this, however, I was helping my brothers and
sisters through their university courses in various parts of Europe,
to the extent of about two hundred and fifty a year. At one time my
brother Shmuel came to live with us, and studied at Manchester Uni-
versity; at another time it was my sister Anna. We were, and have
remained, a rather clannish family.

But I have anticipated, and I must return to the period when we
were counting our pennies and living on short rations — rations con-
siderably shortened, I should say, by the constant diversion of my
energies into the Zionist movement. The Uganda issue had faded out.
Zangwill, who had been a determining influence in English Zionism,
had definitely left the movement, to attend to his own, newly formed
Jewish Territorial Organization. Although his committee included
some very distinguished and high-sounding names — chiefly of English
Jews who objected to Zionism in its pure form — the organization was
doomed to failure from its birth.

It was in effect a sort of geographical society which scoured the world
to find an empty territory in which to plant the Jews, and it labored
under the same fallacy which had led astray some of the originators of the
modern Zionist movement: namely, that it was possible, by any kind
of territorial project, to cure, as if with a magic wand, the evils from
which Jews suffered in congested areas, and to deflect the stream of
immigrants pouring into highly industrialized Western countries toward
some waste and desolate place such as could only be rendered habitable
after decades of work and the expenditure of untold wealth. The terri-
tories usually discovered were either too hot or too cold. However, the
formation of the JTO had one important advantage; it served to isolate

TAKING ROOT 115

this particular fallacy, and to concentrate its adherents in one place,
leaving the rest of Zionism to go back to its original program, to revise
its position in the light of the experience gained in the recent controversy,
and to set to work accordingly.

In these circumstances, my contact with the English Zionists became,
with a few exceptions, more intimate and friendly. They no longer
regarded me as revolutionary, and some of them began to realize that
there are times when ''the longest way round is the shortest way home.’’

The leadership of the Manchester Jewish Community rested between
Charles Dreyfus and Nathan Laski, father of Harold Laski. Mr. Laski
was of Russian origin, and his interest in the Zionist movement was
therefore more natural. The great majority of German Jews in Man-
Chester were disassociated from their people, and many of them were
converts to Christianity. Dreyfus and the other members of his family,
who came from Geneva, were honorable exceptions. There was also in
Manchester a considerable settlement of Sephardic Jews, important
because of the role they played in the cotton trade with India and
Egypt. But by far the largest part of the community was made up of
Russian Jews who were, as usual, very poor, very Jewish and, to me,
very attractive. With them I felt most at home.

In the provinces — that is, in Leeds, Halifax, Liverpool, Glasgow,
Edinburgh, Bradford — to which I traveled increasingly on Zionist mis-
sionary work, I found communities modeled very much on the Man-
chester pattern: a handful of devotees to the cause among the lower
middle classes, indifference or hostility among the upper classes, whether
of British, German or Russian origin, but with the largest number of
exceptions in the last. With some of the well-to-do Russian Jews one
could at least talk, though they, like the others, displayed their Jewish
interest chiefly in the founding of hospitals and orphan asylums, and
in other local philanthropies — ^visible and tangible enterprises which
redounded to the credit of the communities and the glory of the
patrons. The Rabbis and Hebrew teachers were friendly to us ; so was
the Jewish press— what there was of it. The old English-Jewish families
might just as well have belonged to another world.

On the whole the communities were somber and drab. There w^as
rarely a decent hall to hold meetings in; usually w^e gathered in an
ill-lit room in some gloomy building. I remember how I used to arrive
in Manchester at midnight on Sunday, after a week-end visit to
Edinburgh or Leeds, and had to make the long walk home through the
dreary streets all the way to Withington ; for there were no trams after
midnight, and if a cab was obtainable it was beyond my means. And at
home my wife would be waiting for me with the fire burning and some-
thing warm to eat, for I invariably came home half dead with fatigue

«

ii6 TRIAL AND ERROR

and hunger. She looked sad and lonesome, but never reproachful. I think
I would have felt better if she had made a bit of a scene.

I liked those poor Jewish communities. They learned to forgive me
for my opposition to Herzl, and I worked hard with them. I taught, I
explained, I invited discussion. I felt that they were my sort. And in
spite of the drudgery, I was on the whole happy — or I would have been,
if there had not hovered over all of us the shadow of the great Jewish
tragedy in the East. But at least there was a sense of progress now.
The movement had swung back into its proper orbit, and the little we
were doing had meaning and relevance.

London I visited only to see Achad Ha-am, Herbert Bentwich, and
a group of younger Zionists, Harry Sacher, Leon Simon and others.
I was not invited to address any meetings there. The road was still
barred by Greenberg of the Jnvish Chronicle, I am afraid that in addi-
tion to his recollection of my opposition to Herzl, he also felt resentment
at the role I was beginning to play among the provincial Zionists. I am
sorry to say that we never became reconciled, but I do not think the
fault was mine.

Side by side with my Zionist activity in England, I resumed more
sustained contact with European Zionism, so that all in all that prewar
period 1906 to 1914 was one of the most fx“uitful, as well as one of the
most exacting, in my life. But an account of the general progress of
Zionism during those years must be deferred while I try to complete
the picture of our Manchester life.

I feel I cannot too often stress the kindness which my wife and I
encountered from my colleagues at the university. They were a remark-
able group of men, and made up, I believe, as distinguished a faculty
as was then to be found anywhere in any English or European school.
Outside of my own department I became acquainted very early with the
physicist, Arthur Schuster. He was a converted Jew, pi*obably baptized
in childhood, and came of a pi'ominent Fi'ankfort banking family. There
were three brothers, all of whom made fine careers, but by far the
ablest was Arthur, a pupil of J. J. Thompson, and a great physicist. He
was extremely intelligent, an excellent student, and kindhearted to a
degree — but possessed of biting wit. Among the many visitors of the
Schusters— they kept open house — ^was Marie Stopes, famous in later
years as a leader of the birth-control movement. She was at that time
a graduate student, doing research, if I remember rightly, on botany.
She was an ebullient young woman, who held forth endlessly and
vigorously on a great variety of subjects, while Schuster was the typical
savant, restrained and cautious. One day, asking Miss Stopes how she
was getting along in her work, he received the cheerful reply: ^‘Oh,
wonderfully ! I make a new discovery every day Whereupon Pi“ofessor
Schuster inquired courteously : '^Dr. Stopes, if you discover on Tuesday

TAKING ROOT

117

that your discovery of Monday was all wrong, do you count that as
one or as two discoveries?”

The Schusters were accounted liberals, or even radicals, by the
standards of those days. Mrs. Schuster, who was active in university and
civic affairs, was the friend and patroness — as she still is, in her gracious
old age — of all young academicians and people of promise generally. The
Schuster house was very close by ours, in Victoria Park, and it is not
easy to express what that proximity — ^and propinquity — came to mean for
us. Nearly forty years have passed since then, and we have not had a
birthday in all that time which has not brought us a letter of greetings
from Lady ISchuster. With her daughter Nora, we were, as younger
people, on even more intimate footing, and my wife and I treasure among
our most precious memories that of a great mountain-climbing tour of
Switzerland in the summer of 1913, with Nora Schuster and Harry
Sacher as our companions. The daughter of an English clergyman, Mrs.
Schuster took a keener interest in Jewish affairs than her husband, and
she reproached her children — ^who were, of course, only half Jewish —
because of their indifference to the Zionist movement! Lady Schuster
and Sir Arthur attended, in 1925, the opening of the Hebrew university
in Jerusalem, Sir Arthur in a double capacity as representative of
Manchester University and as Secretary of the Royal Society. Him
I could not get to take an active part in Zionism, but he did become a
regular contributor to the Zionist funds, and left part of his splendid
library to the Hebrew University.

Another man with whom we became very close was Professor Samuel
Alexander, the author of Time, Space and Deity , and one of the great
philosophers of our generation. When we left our little house on Birch-
field Road, and moved to more commodious quarters on Brunswick
Road — ^this was, I think, in 1913 — ^we were practically nextdoor neigh-
bors of Alexander’s. I had an enormous admiration for him. He, too,
after a time, began to take an interest in the affairs of his people and
became, within his very modest means, a contributor to the Zionist
funds. He used to come, now and then, to Jewish meetings, and lecture
on Spinoza, but he stayed aloof from public affairs. He followed closely
the development of the Hebrew University, and sent us one of his best
men. Professor Roth, to occupy the chair of philosophy. I tried hard
to get Alexander to go to Jerusalem himself, but it could not be
managed ; for in his later years he became rather deaf, and had to be
looked after.

His personality was as attractive as. his appearance was arresting. He
looked like some ancient Jewish prophet. He was very tall and had a vast
beard and a magnificent dome of a: forehead; and he went about in the
shabbiest of clothes. He was shockingly absent minded. He was a
rather odd sight whep he his bicycle and rode to or from the

ii8 TRIAL AND ERROR

university — the more so as he would be riding on the pavement as often
as on the road, to the delight of passers-by, who all knew him well, and
the great distress of the local police.

A third man with whom I stood on a very friendly footing was Ernest
(afterward Lord) Rutherford, and this too was a friendship which
survived years of separation. Rutherford succeeded Schuster, whose de-
parture to London, to take up the secretaryship of the Royal Society,
was a great blow to us. Rutherford was the very opposite of Schuster.
Youthful, energetic, boisterous, he suggested anything but the scientist.
He talked readily and vigorously on every subject under the sun, often
without knowing anything about it. Going down to the refectory for
lunch I would hear the loud, friendly voice rolling up the corridor. He
was quite devoid of any political knowledge or feelings, being entirely
taken up with his epoch-making scientihe work. He was a kindly person,
but he did not suffer fools gladly. Also he was rather contemptuous of
persons who spoke a few languages. “You can express yourself well in
one language, and that should be English,’" he used to say. Any worker
who came to him and did not prove to be a first-class man was out in
short order. Thus, to be allowed to work with Rutherford was soon
recognized as a distinction, and a galaxy of famous young physicists and
chemists issued from his school. Nils Bohr, the Danish Nobel prize
winner, was among them ; so was the brilliant Moseley, whose promising
life was cut short at the age of twenty-seven by a Turkish bullet at
Gallipoli; D’Andrcad, a young Spanish Jew, Wilson, Geiger and others
of note, were also of Rutherfoixl’s school.

With all this, Rutherford was modest, simple and enormoUvSly good
natured. When he went to Cambridge I lost sight of him for a time.
He later became, at my prompting, a friend of the Hebrew University,
and presided once or twice over dinners in its behalf.

I cannot help linking my memories of Rutherford with those of a
closer friend, Albert Einstein. I have retained the distinct impression
that Rutherford was not terribly impressed by Einstein’s work, while
Einstein on the other hand always spoke to me of Rutherford in the
highest terms, calling him a second Newton. As scientists the two men
were strongly contrasting types — Einstein all calculation, Rutherford all
experiment. The personal contrast was not less remarkable: Einstein
looks like an etherealized body, Rutherford looked like a big, healthy,
boisterous New Zcalandex" — which is exactly what he was. But there is
no doubt that as an experimenter Rutherford was a genius, one of the
greatest. He woi'ked by intuition, and whatever he touched turned to
gold. He seemed to have a sixth sense in his tackling of experimental
problems. Einstein achieved all his results by sheer calculation. Ruther-
ford was considered the greatest chemist of his day. He obliterated the
line of demarcation between chemistry and physics and discovered the

TAKING ROOT

“9

transmutation of the elements, turning chemistry back to alchemy. But
he knew no chemistry in our accepted sense of that science and method.
Nor was he a great mathematician, in which he again stood in contrast
to Einstein.

Rutherford greatly enjoyed pulling my leg about Zionism. “What’s
wrong with England?” he used to ask me, uproariously, and laugh
loudly enough to be heard halfway across the university. One morning,
when I came into the common room, he thrust the London Times under
my nose : Look at that 1 he roared. Israel Gollancz had been appointed
professor of Old English literature at Queen’s College, London. “You
see!” shouted Rutherford. “I understand that Gollancz’s grandfather
came here from Galicia 1 Not chemistry, or physics, mind you, but
literature, something of national significance,” and he finished up with a
great burst of laughter.

“You know, professor,” I said, “if I had to appoint a professor of
Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I would not
take an Englishman!”

“There you are!” shot back Rutherford. “I always said you were
narrow minded, bigoted and jingoistic.”

“For England,” I explained, “it doesn’t matter much. Your culture
is too well established. Gollancz may even bring a new note into the
teaching of English literature, and England will profit by it. But if you
had ten chairs of English literature, and ten Jews got them, what would
you think of it?”

“Oh, that!” roared Rutherford, “that would be a national calamity.”

None of the men at Manchester had so much as heard of Zionism
before they met me. Yet it is extraordinary, to say the least, that, whether
or not they became Zionists, they were all willing to help along. Even
Rutherford, with all his banter, was taken by the idea of the Hebrew
University.

With such men about me — and I have described just a few of them —
how could I do otherwise than develop a deep attachment to the
university? It is true that I suffered one deep disappointment in the
course of my academic career ; I never got my full professorship. But the
disappointment has not dimmed my affection for Manchester, and the
years I spent there make up one of the brightest and warmest periods
in my recollection. Nor was it the university alone. Perhaps it is not
easy for a stranger to get to know Manchester, but when my wife and
I did get to know it, we realized that my almost random choice of this
provincial city had been an inspired one. Manchester boasted — as sc
many other cities do, in their own way — ^that “what Manchester thinks
today, England thinks tomorrow.” In this case the boast was not empty
Apart from its great university, Manchester was a true metropolis oi
culture. It had in those days, the Horniman Repertory Theatre, £

120

TRIAL AND ERROR

pioneer in its time; it had, and still has, the Halle Concerts, deservedly
famous in the world of music, and the Manchester Guardian, as dis-
tinguished a newspaper as is to be found anywhere. The municipality
was a model of liberalism and intelligence. All in all, we found ourselves
at one of the centers of intellectual activity. It was in Manchester that
my wife and I became British subjects. I only regret that my wandering
life forced me, after twelve years of residence there, to break my
contact with Manchester so completely.

CHAPTER 9

Return to Realities

Political Zionism^^ and Practical Zionism” — Their Synthesis
— The Genesis of the Homeland — My First Visit to Palestine
— Dream and Reality — The Old Colonies and Baron Edmond
de Rothschild — The New Zionist Enterprises — Joshua Chankin
— Lost Opportunities — The Challukkah Spirit — Arthur Rup pin ^
the Great Colonizer — The Sand Dunes Which Became Tel
Aviv — Samuel Pevsner — Disappointment in Jerusalem — Quiet
Growth of the Homeland — Harry Sacher, Simon Marks^ and
Israel Sieff — My Scientific Work — Synthetic Rubber and Fer-^
mentations — I Almost Settle in Berlin.

T*HE condition of the Zionist movement, in 1906, the year I turned
back from my imperfect and fitful seclusion to give it again its proper
role in my life, may be summarized thus : the controversy between the
Ugandists and the “classical” Zionists had transformed itself into the
controversy between “political” and “practical” Zionism ; and this in turn
was yielding to a fusion of the two schools. The political Zionists argued :
“Palestine belongs to Turkey. The purchase of land is forbidden by law.
We can do nothing now but work for the charter, and use the Great
Powers, like England and Germany, to help us obtain the charter.” It
was a view shared by the German and Austrian Zionist organizations,
and by most of the Westerners. A small group in England, headed by
Dr. Gaster and Herbert Bentwich, opposed them. Gaster's opposition,
however was not very useful. I had the highest respect for his scholarship
and his Jewish feeling, but I could not escape the impression that his
Zionist point of view was tainted by an ingrained personal opposition
to Herzl. My chief source of strength was Achad Ha-am and the group
that gathered about him.

The second, or practical school — ours — ^took what I have repeatedly
called a more organic view of Zionism, and of historical process. In
reality the “cultural” and “practical” Zionists were not opposed to Zionist
political activity, as has often been represented ; they only sought to
impress upon the Zionist world the obvious truth that political activity
alone is not enough; it must be accompanied by solid, constructive

121

122

TRIAL AND ERROR

achievement, the actual physical occupation of land in Palestine, which
in turn would be accompanied by the moral strengthening of the Jewish
consciousness, the revival of the Hebrew language, the spread of the
knowledge of Jewish history, and the strengthening of the attachment to
the permanent values of Judaism.

I repeat that the process of fusion of the two schools was not a simple
matter. Such was the fascination of phrases, such the force of prejudices
once they were given sway over the mind, that the first resumption of
real colonizing activity ran up repeatedly against obstinate opposition. It
was as if people felt that bringing Jews into Palestine, founding colonies,
beginning industries, in a modest way, was not the real business of
Zionism. That was quite different ; that consisted of the repetition of our
intention to create a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine; and until such
a commonwealth w^as created in a charter no progress of any importance
would be achieved.

The deadlock was broken, I believe, at the eighth Zionist Congress,
held in The Plague in the summer of 1907. I made there an ardent plea
for the views which I had been propagating since my entry into the
movement. I said, in effect: ''Our diplomatic work is important, but it
will gain in importance by actual performance in Palestine. If we achieve
a synthesis of the two schools of Zionism, we may get past the dead
point. Perhaps we have not done very much till now. But if you tell me
that we have been prevented by local difficulties, by the Turkish
authorities, I will not accept it. It is not wholly the fault of the Turks.
Something can always be done.’’ I pleaded that even if a charter, such
as Herzl had dreamed of, were possible, it would be without value unless
it rested, so to say, on the very soil of Palestine, on a Jewish population
rooted in that soil, on institutions established by and for that population.
A charter was merely a scrap of paper ; unlike other nations and govern-
ments, we could not convert it into a reality by force ; we had nothing
to back it with except work on the spot. It was, of course, necessary
for us to keep our case before the tribunals of the world, but the
presentation of our case could only be effective if, along with it, there
was immigration, colonization, education.

To carry my point, I coined the phrase "synthetic Zionism,” which
became a slogan among the practical Zionists. It was with this rallying
cry that we managed to effect a change in the Executive, and in the
program. David Wolffsohn was displaced from the Presidency. A Presi-
dium was formed, to which the younger men were admitted — ^Victor
Jacobson and Shniarya Levin among others — ^together with some of
the "practical” Zionists, like Ussishkin and Tschlenow, Professor Otto
Warburg, the distinguished botanist, a definite exponent of "practical”
Zionism, was elected chairman of the Presidium. Dr. Arthur Ruppin,
who was to become our foremost colonizing expert, was invited to go

RETURN TO REALITIES 133

out to Palestine and organize a Colonization Department, doing the
best he could in the political circumstances then prevailing.

For those who are interested in the genesis of things, for whom an
existing community is not something self-understood, but an organism
which had a beginning, and a period of first growth, the early history of
Jewish Palestine will have a special fascination. Today a strong, well-
knit and vigorous Jewish nation in the making, numbering over six
hundred thousand souls, exists in Palestine, with its agriculture, its
cities, industries, schools, hospitals and university. Today the acquisition
of a few thousand acres of land at a single purchase is a commonplace.
We have seen — and I trust we shall again see — ^tens of thousands of
Jewish immigrants drawn annually into Palestine and integrated with
its economy and culture. But in the years of which I am speaking a
few hundred acres of land was a vast territory ; the arrival of a handful
of immigrants was an event ; a single little industry was a huge achieve-
ment. Capital was not yet tempted to seek out Palestine. A powerful
workers’ movement did not exist because there was no working class
yet in Palestine. Seen in retrospect our outlook of those days was not
merely modest; it was almost pitiful. Yet the prewar years 1906 to
1914 were decisive in a sense. The stamp of their work is still visible in
Palestine. For we accumulated a body of experience which was to stand
us in good stead in the years that followed the First World War. We
anticipated many of the problems which were to confront us in the days
of larger enterprise. We laid the foundations of institutions which are
part of the re-created Jewish National Home. Above all, we got the
feel of things so that we did not approach our task after the Balfour
Declaration like complete beginners.

It was not an accident that my own first contact with Palestine itself
should have been made in the year 1907, the year in which the movement
recovered the sober sense of reality. When the change was effected in
the Zionist Executive, Johann Kremenetzky, of Vienna, one of the old
Herzlian Zionists, not as deeply set in his ways as the Marmoreks and
Fischers, was won to our view. Kremenetzky, like many others passed
over hastily in these records, deserves, both as a person and a Zionist,
much more generous treatment than can be given him here. He had
migrated to Vienna from Odessa as a boy and had become a successful
industrialist. He owned, at that time, a factory of electric bulbs, and had
made it a model of its kind. The friendship we established lasted till
long after the First World War, for he lived to a ripe old age — eighty-
five, I think. He used to visit me in London, a gallant, beautifully
groomed figure of a man, with undimmed vigor and undiminished
faculties, devoted to Palestine to the end. Kremenetzky it was who
made my first visit to Palestine possible. He challenged me, during the
course of the Congress, to put into practice what I was preaching, to go

124 TRIAL AND ERROR

out to the country, and to investigate, as an industrial chemist, the
prospects of establishing an industry there. ,In particular, he suggested
the possibility of the manufacture of essential oils. As it happened I was
engaged in working out a process for the synthetic production of camphor
which stands in near relation to that part of chemistry which deals with
essential oils. I may as well say at once that nothing direct came of this
particular project. But like many another experiment in those days it
had great value in that it began the search for practicalities. Something
was indeed to come, much later, of the application of my chemical
training to the problem of the upbuilding of Palestine, and this first
visit of mine to the country, in 1907, might have been made much
later had it not been for the shift of emphasis which took place at the
Hague Congress.

Thus it came about that, instead of returning to Manchester, where
I had left my wife and our six-weeks-old baby, I set out at the end
of the Congress for Palestine, traveling down first to Marseille, and
taking a boat there. I had two companions on the journey, Manya
Wilbushevitch Shochat, one of the great women pioneers, and a Dr.
Klimker, a pioneer of the oil and soap industry of Palestine. All the way
from Marseille to the eastern shores of the Mediterranean I kept pre-
paring myself for the shock of the first contact. I damped my hopes
down, suppressed my excitement. I said to myself: “You must free
yourself entirely from your romanticisms, from all the associations with
which you have bound up the name of Palestine since your childhood.
You will find a derelict country ravaged by centuries of Turkish misrule.
You must look at things soberly and critically, with the eyes of the
chemist rather than those of the Zionist.” And thus the chemist and the
Zionist were at constant war within me during the sea voyage. I was so
anxious to be detached and objective that I denied myself the advantage
of my emotions. Yet I knew then, and I have confirmed since, that while
a cool, matter-of-fact estimate of the possibilities of Palestine is an
absolute essential, the normal element of our historical and psychological
attachment to the country is an invaluable ally in the struggle to overcome
those material and moral difficulties which seem so formidable to the
chemist and physicist. To ignore the force of sentiment in the name of
practicality is to cease being practical.

However, if I was determined to find the minimum of encouragement,
circumstances were not less determined to give my hopes no foothold.
The journey took much longer than we anticipated. The last lap took
us from Alexandria to Beyrouth, and there we were clapped into
quarantine for ten days. The building in which we were interned was
dignified by the name of “hospital.” It was a dilapidated military
barracks, with the most primitive sanitary arrangements, very poor
food, and no attendance at all, If there had been any diseases about, this

RETURN TO REALITIES 125

would have been the place to catch them. Fortunately there weren't any
diseases about, either in Egypt, or on our boat, or in Syria ; the quaran-
tine had been instituted chiefly as a source of revenue for the local pasha
and his henchmen. Cramped as I was for time, I would have been glad to
give them their cut and get out ; but that would have been a blow to the
institution. So we sat it out. Manya Shochat and Klimker — ^both of
whom had been in Palestine before — utilized the time to instruct me in
the ways of the country, and to describe general conditions. Victor
Jacobson, who was in Beyrouth as the director of the local branch
of the Anglo-Palestine Bank, came to see us, and it was from him that I
first heard something of the nascent Arab national movement.

Released at last from quarantine, I proceeded from Beyrouth to Jaffa
by boat, and set foot on the land which had been such an integral part
of my thoughts ever since my childhood. I was face to face at last with
the reality, and as always happens in such cases, the encounter was
neither as bad nor as good as I had anticipated.

A dolorous country it was on the whole, one of the most neglected
corners of the miserably neglected Turkish Empire. Its total population
was something above six hundred thousand, of which about eighty
thousand were Jews. The latter lived mostly in the cities, Jerusalem
(where they formed a majority of the population), Hebron, Tiberias,
Safed, Jaffa and Haifa. There were twenty-five colonies on the land.
But neither the colonies nor the city settlements in any way resembled,
as far as vigor, tone and progressive spirit are concerned, the colonies
and the settlements of our day. The dead hand of the Challukkah lay on
more than half the Jewish population. That institution, historically
significant in its time, calls for a word of description. For many genera-
tions pious European Jews had made it a practice to migrate to Palestine
in their old age, so that they might die on holy soil. They were supported
by a system of collections in the European commxmities. Their sole
activity was the study of sacred books. They had never intended to take
up gainful occupations, nor wei'e they, as a rule, young enough to do so
if they had had the intention. A few of them went into business in a small
way. Historically speaking, they had been the expression of the undying
Jewish attachment to Palestine; but in an age which was to witness the
reconstruction of the Jewish Homeland, they were a useless and even
retarding element.

The colonies were, with very few exceptions, in not much better
case. When I was a boy in Motol and Pinsk the first wave of modern
colonizers — ^the Bilus, as they were called — ^had set out for Palestine,
under the impulse of the Chibath Zion movement. They had been
ardent, romantic, devoted, full of noble purposes and high dreams. But
they had been inexperienced and impractical. They too had fallen into
the grip of a kind of Challukkah institution, but the funds for them came,

126

TRIAL AND ERROR

not from public collections, but from the never-ending generosity of
Baron Edmond de Rothschild. They had not even started out with
intelligent plans. They had not envisaged a process of national develop-
ment, in which Jewish workers and Jewish landowners would form
harmonious parts of a larger program. The colonies were more in the
nature of businesses than agricultural enterprises. The settlers dealt in
oranges as they had dealt in other commodities, back in Russia. Most of
the labor was Arab, and the Jews were overseers. There was no pioneer-
ing spirit. Moreover, the few colonies were detached and scattered ; they
did not form blocks of territory. All this was particularly true about
Petach Tikvah, Rishon-Ie-Zion and Ness Zionah in the south, of Rosh
Pinah, Mishmar Ha-Yarden and Mctullah in the north. I found Achad
Ha-am’s criticisms, his observations on the paralyzing effect of the
Baron's well-meant paternalism, thoroughly justified. Though there
was an agricultural school at Mikveh Israel, there was no real scientific
study of soil conditions, of crops, of the care of cattle. There existed no
system of agrarian credits. There was no system for training new-
comers.

The picture was not all dai"k. Our Zionist type of enterprise was to be
found in a few places like Merchaviah, Ben Shemen and Huldah. The
young men and women who had come out of Russia in the last few
years were establishing their first foothold in the Jewish colonies,
competing, by superior intelligence and organization, with the cheaper
Arab labor. There was a Jewish high school — the Gymnasium — in Jaffa ;
and the Bezalel Arts and Crafts School had been established in Jerusalem
the year before I came out. Enough had been started to show that more
could be done.

Joshuah Chankin, one of the famous original pioneers, was my guide
on my first visit to Palestine. He accompanied me through the length and
breadth of the country. We traveled mostly by carriage, for the only
railroad then in existence ran — if that is the word — ^l>etween Jaffa and
Jerusalem, and took four or five hours to cover a distance which we
now make in less than an hour by car.

I could not have had a better guide. He knew every nook and corner
of the land ; he knew the history and development of all the colonies, and
spoke of them informatively as well as amusingly. We began our tour
from Jaffa, and worked our way as far as Metullah, which is today on the
Syrian border. I remember Nazareth vividly. We arrived there on a
hot afternoon, riding southward, and from the hilltop we looked down on
the wide stretch of the Valley of Jezreel, spreading at our feet like a vast
carpet framed by the hills of Samaria and Ephraim, with Mt. Tabor to
the left. It was a superb sight, though the countryside was parched with
the late-summer heat, and there was hardly a patch of green anywhere
for the eye to rest on. How different that panorama looks today, with

RETURN TO REALITIES

127

countless Jewish colonies covering the valley from end to end! Chankin
told me how a part of the Emek — ^that is, the Jezreel Valley — ^had been
bought, long before, by the Choveve Zion, for a comparatively small
sum and how, because of the lack of funds, the installments were discon-
tinued, so that the first payments were lost and, with them, the
opportunity. He said: ^^Of course we shall have to buy it again,^’ and
we did, later, paying ten to fifteen times the original price, because of
the land values we ourselves had created. But I remember thinking how
right I had been when I had told the Congress that, in spite of restrictions
and difficulties, much more could be done in Palestine than had actually
been done.

I spoke long and earnestly with Chankin about the disheartened and
disheartening state of the colonies. New blood had to be brought into
the country ; a new spirit of enterprise had to be introduced. Once there
had been a stream of immigration, the Bilus of the ’eighties, more than
twenty years before; but there had been no follow-up. The pioneers
that had once been so young, so full of energy and will power, had
become old, tired, decrepit. The Baron’s regime had helped to undermine
them. They had come to rely on his bounty; a bad harvest, a cattle
plague, or any other calamity, sent them to him for help. Their initiative
had been destroyed by the dictatorial bureaucracy of the Baron’s ad-
ministration. They had lost hope; and they saw their children, born to
them in Palestine, leaving the land and going to the cities, or, what was
worse, returning to the exile from which they themselves had once fled
in order to build a homeland for the coming generations.

The primary object of my visit, the establishment of a factory for
essential oils, receded into the background of my thoughts. I was pre-
occupied with larger issues. Over and over again it was borne in on me
that from a distance I had sensed the actual state of affairs ; in spite of
all political and administrative obstacles, there were great possibilities.
Only the will was lacking. Plow was that to be awakened? How was a
cmnulative process to be set in motion? Our means were miserably
small. The Jewish National Fund, created for the purchase of land as
the inalienable property of the Jewish people, was little more than a
charity-box collection. The Palestine office of the Zionist Organization,
which Ruppin now headed, was no better off. When Ruppin demanded,
in those days, that a land-development company be founded with the
modest capital of one million marks — ^a quarter of a million dollars — ^the
Organization placed at his disposal exactly one-tenth of that sum; and
when we reflected that Baron Rothschild had sunk in the country some-
thing like fifty million marks, with tlie results I have described, we might
well have been discouraged. If we were not, the fact must be ascribed
to our feeling that a great source of energy was waiting to be tapped — ^the

128

TRIAL AND ERROR

national impulse of a people held in temporary check by a misguided
interpretation of historic method.

I made up my mind that I would go back to Europe to press with
redoubled energy for immediate practical work in Palestine ; and it was
then, I think, that I laid out the program of my Zionist work for the
next eight years. How, it will be asked, did we actually get past the
dead point ? The answer is : simply by getting past it ! I have said that
between 1906 and 1914 we accumulated a body of experience, antici-
pated our future problems and laid the foundations of our institutions.
But it must not be thought that these were merely token achievements.
They had substance. By 1914 we had increased the Jewish population
from eighty thousand to one hundred thousand, our agricultural workers
from five hundred to two thousand. The turnover of the Palestine office
had grown thirtyfold. We had founded the Jewish National Library, and
the T echnikum of Haifa ; our Gymnasium was attracting large numbers
of Jewish students from abroad, who were bringing thousands of dollars
annually into the country. These evidences of growth were, however,
less important than the change of spirit which had come over the entire
community. Apart from founding new colonies, like Kinereth and
Deganiah, we had penetrated the old colonies, creating among them
annexes of young people. The existence of two thousand Jewish land
workers acted as an attraction for young Jews from abroad. There
was an instrument for them to turn to, an instrument which could
absorb them into the new life. The transformation which was wrought
in the old European-Palestine communities by the influx of young
European Jews began to affect the old Sephardic, or Eastern, communi-
ties, and led to an influx of Yemenite Jews from Arabia. The Challukkah
spirit of Palestine was at last being attacked — ^though it yielded very
slowly. The Hebrew language had, thanks in part to the magnificent
work of Eliezer ben Yehudah, been revived, and was the natural medium
of converse for the majority of the Palestinian Jews, and wholly so for
the young. The flow of migration back into the exile had fallen
considerably.

Perhaps I can best sum up the j-^rogress of those years in a remark
made to me by Baron Rothschild. Shortly before the First World War
he paid a visit to Palestine, and saw for himself the change that had been
wrought. I met him, soon after, in Paris, when I went to see him in
connection with my work for the Hebrew University. I asked him for his
impressions of Palestine, and he answered me simply and honestly:
'Without me the Zionists could have done nothing, but without the
Zionists my work would have been dead.'" The rapprochement between
the Baron and the Zionist movement dates from that period; he had
become convinced at last that the Zionists were not simply idealistic
agitators ; they were capable of getting things done.

RETURN TO REALITIES

129

The man who during those years — and indeed throughout the
quarter-century following the First World War — ^played a decisive part
in the colonization of Palestine was Arthur Ruppin. I suppose it was
wholly fitting that I should have met this eminently practical Zionist
during my first visit to Palestine, when I was establishing my own
contact with realities. I had heard something of him, for it was the
seventh Zionist Congress — thzt of The Hague — ^which decided to engage
him as the director of the newly founded Palestine Department; and
when I was introduced to him in Haifa I was somewhat taken aback.
I saw before me a young German — I would almost have said Prussian —
correct, reserved, very formal, seemingly quite remote from Jewish
and Zionist problems. I was told that he was an assessor, or assistant
judge, that he had had a successful business career, and that he had
come out to Palestine in the spring of 1907, and spent several months
there studying the land. All that one perceived on first meeting Ruppin
was a German statistician and student of economics, but beneath that
cool exterior there was a passionate attachment to his people, and to the
upbuilding of Palestine. I learned this in the course of the years.

Ruppin was a man of brilliant mind, and of absolute integrity. His
practical gifts were reinforced by equal gifts as a theoretician, and his
books on Jewish sociology deservedly take a front rank in their field.
His coolness misled people into thinking him an easygoing sort of person.
Actually, whatever he said and wrote and did was the result of deep
thought and a solid sense of responsibility. I remember few errors of
judgment on his part, and when he differed with me — ^as for example in
1922, on the question of the minimum costs of colonization — ^he was
usually right. In all disputes he used to disarm opposition by his im-
perturbability, and in a movement which had its very excited moments,
he would never let himself be provoked into anger or abuse. He would
answer quietly, with a kindness which killed opposition. I do not think
I ever saw him angry, although, God knows, he had reason enough on
occasion.

There was one case in which he was treated with the grossest unfair-
ness. In 1919 he came to England from Palestine, and produced two
hundred thousand pounds out of moneys which he had handled for the
Zionist Organization. This large sum, totally unexpected, was a godsend.
It helped to fill up the deep cavity formed in the capital of the Jewish
Colonial Trust by the losses sustained in Russia in consequence of the
Revolution, losses which made the position of the bank, at the beginning
of our new period of work, rather precarious. But Ruppin was bitterly
abused, and suspicion was cast on his integrity. This is how he had
come by the money : during the war he had been receiving, from America,
twenty-five thousand dollars a month, for work in Palestine. The money
was sent to him via Constantinople, and he had paid out in Turkish

130

TRIAL AND ERROR

pounds. As the war dragged on, the Turkish pound sank in relation to
the American dollar, and Ruppin saved a considerable sum each month.
He carried out his instructions to the letter, and the saving was not of
his own making. This, on top of the dislike which he had occasioned by
the socialist tendency of his colonization work, precipitated a bitter
attack, and he was accused of being a speculator. I do not know of a more
ridiculous and more unjustified accusation ever leveled at a man of
absolute devotion and honesty. Curiously, the attack did not seem to
touch him. His friends were furious, but he remained quite unmoved.

I have not had a better collaborator in my Zionist work than Arthur
Ruppin. I received from him not only splendid service, but constant en-
couragement in enterprises which without his support would have
lacked reality. He assured us all, in the old days, that Palestine was
capable of absorbing large numbers of Jews in agriculture, and that we
must not let ourselves be frightened off by the smallness of the country.
One incident, which occurred during our first meeting in Palestine,
illustrates the daring of his vision, concealed by his quiet, almost frigid,
exterior. I was staying in Jaffa when Ruppin called on me, and took
me out for a walk over the dunes to the north of the town. When we
had got well out into the sands — I remember that it came over our
ankles — he stopped, and said, very solemnly: "'Here we shall create a
Jewish city!'' I looked at him with some dismay. Why should people
come to live out in this wilderness where nothing would grow? I began
to ply him with technical questions, and he answered me carefully and
exactly. Technically, he said, everything was possible. Though in the
first years communication with the new settlement would be difficult, the
inhabitants would soon become self-supporting and self-sufficient. The
Jews of Jaffa would move into the new, modern city, and the Jewish
colonies of the neighborhood would have a concentrated market for their
products. The Gymnasium would sfand at the center, and would attract a
great many students from other parts of Palestine and from Jews al)road,
who would want their children to be educated in a Jewish high school in
a Jewish city.

Thus it was Ruppin who had the first vision of Tel Aviv, which was
destined to outstrip, in size -and in economic importance, the ancient
town of Jaffa, and to become one of the metropolitan centers of the
eastern Mediterranean. Perhaps I should say that the most important
consequence of the shift from purely political to ''synthetic" Zionism
was the introduction into Palestine, in those early years, of a number of
first-class men who did excellent work then and in the postwar years.
Ruppin was foremost among them. Not altogether in his class, but of
high value nevertheless, was Samuel Pevsner, in whose house I met
Ruppin, Pevsner had belonged to our Berlin Zionist group, and we had
been friends nearly a decade before. He was a man of great ability,

RETURN TO REALITIES 131

energetic, pi'actical, resourceful and, like his wife, highly educated. For
such people, going to Palestine was in effect going into a social wilder-
ness — which is something to be remembered by those who, turning to
Palestine today, find in it intellectual, cultural and social resources not
inferior to those of the Western world. The Jewish community of Haifa
was a tiny one, and nine-tenths of it was Sephardic. The bridge of
Hebrew which was to unite Oriental and Occidental Jewry had not
yet been created. So Pevsner and his wife lived almost in isolation. But
Pevsner was a tremendous optimist, and though he died young, he lived
long enough to see his optimism vindicated. He practically built up
modern Jewish Haifa, that is to say, the splendid quarter of Hadar
Ha-Carmel on the slopes above the old city.

During the first visit to Palestine I came across scattered reminders of
my childhood days in Pinsk. The Eisenbergs were settled in Rehovoth.
The Gluskins were in Rishon le-Zion. And others, whose names escape
me, were taking root in the cities and colonies, tiny advance guards, the
“Pilgrim Fathers’’ of the new Palestine to be.

My most unhappy experience during the three-weeks tour of the
country — it would have been five weeks, but for the quarantine episode —
was Jerusalem. I went up from Jaffa, not without misgivings. Jaffa
already had the small beginnings of a new life, and the promise of a
new society; Jerusalem was the city of the Challukkah, a city living on
charity, on begging letters, on collections. Here the reality turned out to
be as bad as the anticipation. From the Jewish point of view it was a
miserable ghetto, derelict and without dignity. All the grand places
belonged to others. There were innumerable churches, of every sect and
nationality. We had not a decent building of our own. All the world had
a foothold in Jerusalem — except the Jews. The hotel to which we were
directed was a dilapidated and verminous ruin, with nondescript people
pouring in and out all day long, and all of them engaged apparently in
wasting their own and each other’s time. It depressed me beyond words,
and I left the city before nightfall. I remained prejudiced against the
city for many years, and even now I still feel ill at ease in it, preferring
Rehovoth to the capital.

But J was struck, as everyone must be, by the glorious surroundings
of Jerusalem; and I thought then that there was only one place where,
in time to come, we might erect some building worthy of the Jewish
community ; there was one hill still uncrowned by monastery or Church —
the Scopus, on which stood then only the small villa of Lady Grey
Hill, and on which now stands the Hebrew University.

Those were unsensational years which preceded the First World
War, a time of hard work and quiet growth. The modest progress
which we were achieving in Palestine was mirrored in the steady evolu-
tion of the Zionist movement toward the serious appraisal of factual

TRIAL AND ERROR

13s

problems. When, in September 1913, Ruppin, addressing the eleventh
Zionist Congress, in Vienna, said: '"We have come to terms with the
fact that we must achieve our object not via the charter, but via practical
work in Palestine,” he expressed the prevailing sentiment of the move-
ment: we had not given up the hope of a charter, but we had come
to terms with the conditions created by the lack of it. In short, the
Zionist movement had become serious and realistic. We were not neglect-
ing opportunities simply because they were for the time being limited
ones.

In such an' atmosphere I had every incentive to Zionist activity. It
w^ould take me too far afield to tell in detail of my Zionist labors in those
years; and except for the story of the founding of the Technikum in
Haifa, and of the beginnings of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, I
shall dismiss the period in a paragraph. I was once more as deeply
involved in political activity as in the old Geneva days. My wife and I
attended all the Congresses in Europe, and went to meetings of the
Actions Committee. I toured the English provinces. I took part in the
expanding Zionist program of the Manchester community. Here, by
1914, a strong group had formed. Harry Sacher had returned from
London, to become one of the leader writers on the Manchester Gmrdian,
Two young businessmen of great ability and a sense of social respon-
sibility, whom I have already mentioned, Simon Marks and Israel
Sieff, had been drawn into the movement. They were not Zionists at
first. But they had heard me speak at one of the Manchester meetings,
their interest had been aroused, and they wrote to me — ^this was in
1913 — asking if they might come to see me and discuss the movement
with me. From that time on we worked together, in a friendship which
has meant much to me and to Zionism. For Zionism became increasingly
the leitmotif of their lives, and they brought to it qualities of which we
stood greatly in need. They were young and energetic. They were
practical, and knew that work could not be done without a budget. They
were not hampered by ancient Zionist dissensions, nor were their lives
scarred by recollections of persecution. They were jolly and they loved
the good things of life. They helped me, in later years, to put some sort
of organization into my rather disorganized life. And they were, like
Harry Sacher, a great spiritual find. Here were people with whom
problems could be discussed, with whom I could check and verify my
ideas, and gauge how they would impress others. Not knowing the
great difficulties in our way, they were readier for action than I, who
was often hesitant and overcautious. In short, they helped to make
Manchester, the city to which I had come as a stranger, and had
considered a place of exile, a happy place for me.

The reader may by now have forgotten that I was not only a Zionist
worker, but a teacher at a university, and a research chemist. The fact

RETURN TO REALITIES 133

is that my two lives ran side by side in a sort of counterpoint. Where
I found all the time and energy is something of a puzzle; but I know
that between 1906 and 1914 I enjoyed my chemical researches more
than I had ever done before, or have done since. I enjoyed teaching no
less. I published a considerable number of papers, and these in time
brought me a Doctorate of Science from the university. Around 1912
I was put in charge of the course in chemistry for medicine, and some of
the advanced medical students came to my laboratory. Thus I gradually
built up a special section, and was promoted to a readership in biochem-
istry. I had a laboratory of my own and was completely independent —
that is to say, I was no longer attached to the chair in organic chemistry,
and could begin to hope for a full professorship of my own.

My interest in biological chemistry and in bacteriology as a special
branch of organic chemistry began some years after I had settled in
Manchester. Facilities for this work were lacking at the university, where
biochemistry did not form part of the curriculum at that time, while the
study of bacteriology was confined to the medical school. I began to pay
frequent visits to the Pasteur Institute in Paris, where I worked in the
bacteriological and micrological departments. For a time I devoted most
of my holidays, Christmas, Easter and summer, to these interests, making
use of the trips to attend Zionist Congresses and Conferences. In Paris
I learned something more than chemistry; I became acquainted with
French civilization and the French way of life. My wife and I usually
stayed in the Latin Quarter, with her sister and her brother-in-law, Joseph
Blumenfeld, a gifted chemist. Urbain, Perrin, Langevin, liberals and
thinkers as well as first rate scientists, brilliant men who combined the
qualities of the research student with those of the artist, were then at
the Sorbonne. I worked for a time in Perrin’s laboratory, learning some-
thing of colloidal chemistry, a part of biochemistry.

During one of our vacations in Switzerland I gave two or three
months to research on milk bacteriology with a very distinguished man
by the name of Burri. The rest of my training in biochemistry I
supplemented with my own reading and work in Manchester. It was
during this period, too, that I began the study of fermentations. I was
led to this subject by its relation to the production of synthetic rubber,
which was already then, around 1910 or 1911 — a burning question. The
use of rubber was growing enormously, prices were going up, and there
was a clamor for an artificial product.

The obvious approach to the problem was to find a method for the
synthetic production of isoprene and for its polymerization to a rubber.
The easiest raw material I could think of was isoamyl alcohol, which
is a by-product of alcoholic fermentation, but as such was not available
in sufficiently large quantities. I hoped to find a bacterium which would
produce by fermentation of sugar more of this precious isoamyl alcohol

134 TRIAL AND ERROR

than does yeast — one was not yet aware of the fact that isoaniyl alcohol
is not a fermentation product (of sugar), but is formed by degradation
of the small amounts of protein invariably present in a fermenting mash.
In the course of this investigation I found a bacterium which produced
considerable amounts of a liquid smelling very much like isoamyl
alcohol But when I distilled it, it turned out to be a mixture of acetone
and butyl alcohol in very pure form. Professor Perkin advised me to
pour the stuff down the sink, but I retorted that no pure chemical is
useless or ought to be thrown away. A later chapter wih have to
describe how right I was in my attitude tow'ard this interesting
fermentation process. At this stage of my chemical research I decided
that it was worth while seeing whether butadiene, which could be made
from butyl alcohol, in the same way as isoprene from isoamyl alcohol,
could not be polymerized to a rubber-like substance exactly like isoprene.
We studied the preparation of butadiene, its purification, for which we
discovered a very nice method, viz., the formation of a crystalline addi-”
tion product with liquid sulphur dioxide, and its polymerization which
we found was catalyzed by small amounts of metallic sodium.

The question of synthetic rubber, however, very soon ceased to be
urgent as the price of natural rubber dropped again, and the whole
subject was forgotten until the Germans during and especially after the
First World War took it up again, and until the Second World War
brought it into the foreground of technical and strategic interest As
still no good technical method for the production of isoprene existed,
the idea of replacing it by butadiene was taken up, and the first
polymerization process used our sodium method (hence the German
name, Buna, from ?7Zf-tadiene-natrium, the latter being the German for
sodium). Even the purification of butadiene with sulphur dioxide has
recently been advocated again. In order to round off the narrative, I
may add that we succeeded eventually in finding a simple method for
making isoprene — ^but this belongs to another period.

My work centered primarily on two subjects. The first was the
elaboration of a reaction which I had discovered in Geneva, and which
led to the comparatively easy production of polynuclear compounds ; the
second was the investigation of anthraquinone derivatives. These are
the mother substances for the making of dyestuffs and some pharma-
ceuticals. As far as the latter were concerned, I had to feel my way
slowly, and do a good deal of reading, for I was a stranger in this
domain. It was only during the war that I achieved a certain familiarity
with the subject.

One rather disagreeable incident out of those years I must set down,
less for what it meant than for what it might have come to mean. I
had been hoping, as I have told, for a’ full professorship at the university.
In 1913 a vacancy was created. I had been doing a great deal of work

RETURN TO REALITIES 135

outside of my regular schedule, conducting classes which should properly
have been taken care of by my senior, Professor Perkin. I had reason
to believe that my abilities as a teacher, as well as my natural liking for
that sort of work, would be rewarded by the final promotion. However,
the chair went to a relative of Professor Perkin and I must confess I
was very much put out. It happened that at this time the development of
the Zionist movement abroad made urgent the introduction of new
forces into the various departments. Palestine was growing. In Germany
there was an upswing in the movement, and Kurt Blumenfeld, one of the
leading spirits in German Zionism, was effectively organizing the new
academic youth. He, Shmarya Levin and others urged me insistently to
give up my post at Manchester University, come out to Berlin, and head
one of the departments of the Organization. In the pique of my disap-
pointment I actually began to consider the proposal seriously.

Whether, left to my own counsel, I would actually have taken this
step, I do not know. But it was my wife who put her foot down. She
disliked Germany. So, for that matter, did I. She had, after years of
hard work, established herself in her profession, in a new country; she
was winning golden opinions from her superiors in the municipality;
and here I was suggesting that we pull up stakes and begin all over
again. That was too much. She understood my disappointment; she
felt it as keenly as 1 . But a new start — and in Germany, of all places —
was out of the question. She could not face the prospect of taking her
medical degree for the third time, ''And,'' she added, "our road to Pales-
tine will not be via Berlin." I cannot help thinking that she was guided
by something more than personal considerations, either for herself or
for me. In any case, I shudder to think of the possible results if I had
yielded to the importunity of my friends and my own momentary im-
pulse.

CHAPTER lO

The Eve of the War

FrogTess Toword the H ebTCW Ui/iiveTsity — SciTOfi Hdfvtoftd do
Fothschild — Mis Zionist Philosophy — Paul Phrlich and the
Mehnew University — The Maifa Xechnikum and the Battle oj
the Languages — The First World War Begins.

The dream of a Hebrew University in Jerusalem was bom almost
simultaneously with the Zionist movement. Professor Herman Sha-
piro of Heidelberg” had given voice to it when I was still a student in
Berlin. The Jewish student youth which was the banner bearer of Zionism
in the West was deeply stirred by the idea, and I was a warm protagonist
of it during the Geneva period. Herzl, convinced though he was that
practical work in Palestine must wait for the political triumph of the
charter, showed himself less intransigeant than most of his lieutenants —
a situation not unusual in political history — ^and encouraged the young
men in this instance. I discussed the question with him in 1901, and he
promised to try to obtain from the Sultan a special “firman” authorizing
the establishment of the university; but when I visited him in Vienna
in 1902, he stated that there was no hope of such a “firman,” and that
the project would have to be abandoned for the time being.

Our group, the Democratic Fraction, would not take no for an
answer. In 1902 Martin Buber, Berthold Feivel and I published the
first pamphlet on the subject. It was entitled ^^Die Judische Hochschule”
and in it we gave a rough outline of the practical side of the project,
including an approximate budget. The response to the pamphlet was
extraordinarily encouraging ; not only students, but men prominent in
artistic and scientific circles wrote to us, offering their support- At
about the same time Israel Abrahams, of Cambridge University, wrote
an article in support of the idea in the London Jewish Chronicle. Our
group in Geneva received hundreds, perhaps thousands, of warm com-
mendatory letters from every part of the world. And the reader will per-
haps remember that when the series of pogroms beginning with Kishi-
nev broke upon us, I was touring the Russian cities agitating for the
Hebrew University,

Kishinev, Uganda, the death of Herzl, the temporary immobiliza-

136

THE EVE OF THE WAR

137

tion of the Zionist movement, all served to eclipse the work for the
Hebrew University. But in the intervening years the need which ex-
isted for such an institution, and the appeal which it made to academic
groups, went on increasing. However, it was not until the Vienna Con-
gress of 1913 that the Organization placed the university on its agenda.
I read a paper on the project, and at the close of the discussion David
Wolff sohn made the first substantial contribution toward its fulfillment,
and his example was followed by others. Wolff sohn’s gift of one-hundred
thousand marks — ^twenty-five thousand dollars — ^was earmarked for the
university and National Library, which was not built until the end of
the First World War. Meanwhile I was charged with the task of or-
ganizing the University Committee, and Ruppin, the head of the Pales-
tine Department, was instructed to look around for a suitable site.

To anticipate a little: Ruppin actually secured, some time later, the
piece of land on Mount Scopus on which I had set longing eyes in 1907.
The money for this purchase came from Isaac Goldberg, a Russian
Zionist. Ruppin also obtained an option on the Grey Hill House, which
we finally acquired in 1916. The oddity of this last circumstance lies in
the fact that in 1916 the war was going full blast, and Palestine was
in the hands of the enemy Turks. I still remember the astonishment of the
Grey Hill family when they were told that there was a buyer for their
estate on the Scopus. Lady Grey Hill, in particular, was so moved by
this evidence of our faith in the ultimate victory of the Allies, that she
agreed to cede the property to us in advance of the formal arrange-
ments for its transfer. She told us, when we had sealed the bargain,
that this act of ours had done more than anything else to convince her
that England was going to win the war. I could not help thinking of
the ancient Romans, coolly buying and selling suburban parcels of land
which the victorious armies of Hannibal, then besieging Rome, still
occupied.

It was in the winter of 1913 that I first made the personal acquaintance
of Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, whose name, long a house-
hold word in Jewry, recurs so frequently in these pages. M. Gaston
Wormser, the Baron’s secretary and friend, having been approached on
the subject of the university by an old Zionist colleague of mine, wrote
me that the Baron was deeply interested in the project. The news was
unexpected, for we still thought of the, Baron as the rich autocrat
interested exclusively in the philanthopic aspects of the Jewish problem,
and disdainful of political Zionism. We were quite mistaken, but through
no fault of ours, for the Baron was not a man to explain himself. In part
he would not, for that went against his dictatorial temperament; in
part he could not, for I doubt whether he really understood himself.
Throughout the years that followed I obtained, as I think, some in-
sight into that curious and complex personality, one of the most inter-

igS TRIAL AND ERROR

esting I have ever encountered. I cannot help breaking the narrative
at this point in order to set down my impressions of him.

When I first met Baron Edmond he was a man in the sixties, very
much alert, still something of a dandy, but full of experience and sag esse.
Everything about him was in exquisite taste, his clothes, his home —
or rather his homes — his furniture and his paintings, and there still
clung to him the aura of the bon vkrant which he had once been. In
manner he could be both gracious and brutal ; and this was the reflex
of his split personality. For on the one hand he was conscious of his
power, and arrogant in the possession of it ; on the other he was rather
frightened by it, and this gave him a touch of furtiveness. To his family
he was, with his tremendous interest in the Jewish problem, an enigma
and a wild man; but when, in later years, other Rothschilds began to
show an interest in Palestine, and were ready to give us a little money
for the work, he forbade me peremptorily to apply to them. “What 1 ” he
said, furiously. “After Tve spent tens of millions on the project, while
they made fun of me, they want to come in now with a beggarly few
hundred thousand francs and share the glory? If you need money,
you come to me I” Which I often did, and rarely in vain. I remember,
for instance, how when the movement was in a very tight corner for
lack of funds (this was in 1931, when I had been thrown out of office)
I set out on one of my schnorring expeditions and arrived in Paris,
only to be struck down by a bad attack of grippe. The Baron heard of
my condition, and came to the hotel — ^to the bewilderment, indeed almost
the panic, of its personnel — ^with a check for forty thousand pounds. He
put this into my hand with the remark: “This should help to bring your
temperature down.'’ It did.

His interest in Zionism was, au jond, as deeply political as ours. The
manner in which (years before I met him, at the time when he was being
bitterly criticized by the Zionists) he bought the colonies, with some
attempt at strategic placement, indicates that he was thinking far
ahead, in political and national terms. But he was nationalist with a
distrust of the national movement, and of the people. He did not un-
derstand that it was not enough to give money, and not enough to
settle Jews in Palestine. They had to be encouraged in the development
of independence, initiative and inner growth. The Zionist movement as
such had to be strengthened, for it was the matrix of all achievement.
This he could not see. He wanted everything to be done quietly, by
order, without a national movement. He disliked the paraphernalia of
the organization. On one occasion he said to Ussishkin and myself:
“Why must you people go around making speeches and attracting atten-
tion?" To which Ussishkin answered, half seriously: “Baron Edmond,
give us the key to your safe and we promise not to make any more
speeches." He accused me once of being a Bolshevik, by which he

THE EVE OF THE WAR

139

meant, of course, a “wild man’’ generally. I said : ‘'Monsieur le Baron,
on est toiijours le Bolshevik de quelqu’un*' — “one is always someone’s
Bolshevik.” He understood the allusion.

However, he was not a man to be jested with, not even when in his
national purposes he overshot the mark, going sometimes beyond the
Zionists themselves. At a certain time, I remember, he financed a
series of excavations on the Mount of Zion, where some seven ancient
cities lie on top of each other. His purpose was to uncover the Ark of
the Covenant, which he believed to be buried there. I asked him, very
seriously, what he hoped to achieve with the Ark. He answered : ‘%es
jouilles, je m'en fiche: c’est la possession” — “excavations be damned, it’s
possession that counts.”

These revelations, this insight into the man, came later. In 1913, at
our first meeting, I only knew that the Baron was indicating a wider
range of interest in Palestine than we had credited him with, or that he
had learned from experience what he would not learn from argument.

Chiefly we talked, of course, about the University, and on this subject
he expressed himself with force and clarity. He saw the university-to-be
as a great center of light and learning, from which knowledge would
radiate out to the uttermost ends of the earth, reflecting credit on Jeru-
salem and on the Jewish community. But here, too, he showed himself
the autocrat, having, like all rich men, very decided views on subjects
entirely outside his competence. He was of the opinion that the Hebrew
University should be devoted exclusively to the humanities, for it would
never be able to compete with the scientific schools of England, France
and Germany. Shmarya Levin used to say that a rich man always put
him in mind of the fat and the lean cows of Pharaoh’s dream; the rich
man will give you a fat donation, and then follow it up with a lean
philosophy which eats up the fat donation. I thought the Baron’s views
quite absurd; to me a university is a university. However, I had his
support for the general idea. His second condition, though a hard one,
was more reasonable : I had to get Paul Ehrlich to head the University
Committee.

Ehrlich was then at the very height of his phenomenal career, and
utterly unapproachable by ordinary mortals. I had heard, moreover, that
he took little interest in Jewish matters, and indeed in any matters out-
side the scope of his medical research. I was at a loss for a means of
contact, until I bethought myself of an old friend in Berlin, Professor
Landau, who was related to Ehrlich by marriage. In March of 1914 I
made a special journey to Berlin, sought out Landau and said, in effect,
that I would be grateful to him for the rest of my life if he would
telephone his illustrious relative in Frankfort and arrange an interview
for me.

Professor Landau acceded to the request, very doubtful though he was

140 TRIAL AND ERROR

of the feasibility of my plans. I would be lucky, he said, if Ehrlich
gave me five minutes of his time ; and luckier still if I could persuade
him to detach his thoughts from his scientific affairs long enough to
get him to understand what I was talking about; for Ehrlich was
utterly impervious to outside influences, especially in his laboratory,
where I proposed to visit him.

I was not in a very sanguine state of mind when I mounted the steps
of the Speyer Institute, in Frankfort. In spite of my public activities,
I was by nature shy, and hanging about in the antechambers of the
great was not in my line. Not that on this occasion I had much hanging
about to do. The difficulty turned out to be of another character, for
the rather extraordinary interview which Ehrlich granted me quite
promptly nearly turned out to be a piece of propaganda for Ehrlich s
scientific theories rather than for the Hebrew University.

I have retained an ineradicable impression of Ehrlich. His figure was
small and stocky, but he had a head of great beauty, delicately chiseled ;
and out of his face looked a pair of eyes which were the most penetrat-
ing that I have ever seen— but they were eyes filled with human
kindness.

Ehrlich knew that I was a chemist, but he did not know what I was
coming to see him about. He therefore plunged at once into the subject
of his researches. He introduced me to some of his assistants (since
become famous) and especially to his rabbits and guinea pigs. Then
he took me on a fairly comprehensive, if rapid, tour of his laboratory,
talking all the time and performing test-tube experiments as we went
along.

It was fascinating ; but it would have been more so if I had not been
wondering how I could switch the conversation to the purpose of my
visit. I listened respectfully while he unfolded part of his theory of
chemistry — ^for he was a great chemist as well as a great medical man.
He spoke of chemistry as of a weapon with which one could shoot
at diseases. He put it this way: if you have your chemistry properly
applied, you can aim straight at the cause of a sickness. By “properly
applied’* he meant the creation of a certain group in a compound with a
specific affinity for certain tissues in the human body. Such a com-
pound, injected into the body, unites with those tissues only. He gave
me an instance: if one injected a certain dyestuff called methylene blue
into an animal — say a mouse — and afterward cut open the body, one
would find that the whole nervous system had been stained blue, while
the rest of the body had remained unaffected. In methylene blue the
grouping of the atoms makes it a specific for the nervous tissues. But
suppose methylene blue had a curative value for certain nervous diseases ;
you could then, as it were, aim for the nerves without affecting the rest
of the body. He developed this theory to me — it is obsolete now, but was

THE EVE OF THE WAR

141

new then — with great eloquence and excitement, as I followed him
about the laboratory.

At last I took my courage in my hands, and steered the conversation
cautiously in my direction; I mentioned that I had come to see him,
at the suggestion of Baron Edmond de Rothschild of Paris, on the sub-
ject of a Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He listened for a few mo-
ments, and then exclaimed: '‘But why Jerusalem?’' I was off at last!
I set out with considerable energy to explain why Jerusalem was the
one place in all the world where a Hebrew University could and ought
to be established. Somehow I caught his interest, and my excitement
rose as I saw that he was following my argument with increasing atten-
tion. It was perhaps twenty minutes before he interrupted me, saying :
"I am sorry, we must stop now. After I have seen my patients, we shall
go home and continue.”

Then, excitedly, he pulled out his watch and exclaimed:

"You have kept me nearly an hour. Do you know that out there,
in the corridor, there are counts, princes and ministers who are waiting
to see me, and who will be happy if I give them ten minutes of my time.”
He said it good-naturedly, and I replied:

"Yes, Professor Ehrlich, but the difference between me and your
other visitors is that they come to receive an injection from you, but I
came to give you one.”

We continued our conversation later that evening at his house, where
I met Mrs. Ehrlich, a typical, sweet German Hausjrau, who was always
scolding her husband for his untidiness, and for his ceaseless smoking.
Ehrlich was literally never without a cigar in his mouth, and I think
it was this habit that killed him. By the time I left him he promised
to see Baron Edmond on his next visit to Paris, which was to take
place in a few days, and to give him his answer.

I stayed on for a little while in Germany, and got back to Manchester
for the first day of Passover. I found waiting for me an enthusiastic
telegram from Ehrlich. He was in Paris ; he had talked to the Baron ;
and he had consented to serve on the University Committee. It was a
tremendous scoop for me.

In the months that followed I organized the rest of the committee.
Baron Edmond delegated his son, James de Rothschild, of London —
concerning whom I shall have much more to say — ^to serve as his repre-
sentative. Professor Otto Warburg of Berlin joined. Professor Landau
of Berlin persuaded his son, the mathematician, then at Goettingen, and
later professor at the Hebrew University, to accept a place. Martin
Buber and Achad Ha-am also became members. After a good deal of dis-
cussion and correspondence it was agreed that our first official meeting
should be held in Paris — on August 4, 1914.

That meeting was postponed sine die.

142 TRIAL AND ERROR

A few pages back I said that those years 1906 to 1914 made up a
period of tranquil and unsensational development in Zionism, One^ ex-
ception should be made, for it was shortly before the war that a bitter
and significant struggle was waged about the second of our higher
institutions of learning in Palestine, the Haifa Technikumj between the
Zionists and the leaders of German Jewry.

Actually the Tcchmkum, or Technical College, was the first to be
built, though the University — ^the foundation of which was laid in the
midst of the war, and the opening of which did not take place until
1^25 — had been spoken of long before. The Tcchnikmn was the child
of Achad Ha-am and Shmarya Levin. The first considerable sum of
money toward the institution was given by Mr. Wissotzky, the Russian
tea magnate, a man of immense wealth, devoted to Jewish causes, and
something of a Hebrew scholar. He was the main support of Ha-Shi-
loach, the Hebrew monthly, and the Maecenas of Achad Ha-am.
Wissotzky^s contribution was one hundred thousand rubles, then about
fifty thousand dollars, and with this, the building could be put up and
the necessary equipment purchased. Wissotzky, who was advanced in
years, and could not often attend the meetings of the Curatorium, 01
Board of Directors, which were held in Berlin, appointed Achad Ha-am
a member.

When Achad Ha-am and Levin chose Haifa as the site of the new
educational institution, they showed vision of a high order. The infant
town of Tel Aviv was piqued by the choice, but Haifa was destined to
be the industrial heart of the new Palestine, and the proper place for a
technical college. Of greater service, however, was the fight which
Levin put up around the question of the language of instruction.

To understand the significance of this struggle we must recall that
those were the days of the ‘‘capitulations” in Turkish territory. Every
foreign institution in the corrupt and feeble Turkish Empire placed
itself under the protection of a foreign country, and the European
Powers vied with each other for influence and prestige within Turkish
territory. The Jews in particular were used as cats-paws in this game
of intrigue, and the little community which we were struggling to weld
into a creative unit was torn apart by its “benefactors” and “protectors.”
There was one system of Jewish schools supported by the Alliance
Israelite Universelle of Paris: there the language of instruction was
naturally French. The Germans used the icr DeuiwJnii

I nien, with Us system of schools as their instrameiTi!: ot'hhtrigue in the
Near East, There the language of instruction was German. England was
very much behind in the general competition, having under its aegis only
the Evelina de Rothschild School in Jerusalem, where the language was
English. At school Jewish children in Palestine therefore spoke French,
English or German according to their foreign “protectors,” It was a

THE EVE OF THE WAR

143

strange and rather pathetic fact that when they mingled with each
other outside the schools they took to Hebrew as the common denomina-
tor. It apparently occurred to no one that the proper language for
Jewish children in the schools of Palestine was their own Hebrew.

The Haifa Technikum had placed itself under the protection of Ger-
many, and Dr. Zimmerman, then German Under Secretary for For-
eign Affairs, had obtained from the Turkish Government the permission
for the purchase of the land and the erection of the building, which
was completed in 1913. The Curatorium consisted at first of representa-
tives of the Hilfsverein and of Mr. Wissotzky; later, when he sensed
that a crucial point would be reached in the struggle round the language,
Achad Ha-am obtained a place for me on the board. Achad Ha-am him-
self did not wish to be brought into too open conflict with his old
friend Wissotzky, who, though a Hebraist, was weakening on the
question under the pressure of the majority.

The decisive meeting took place in Berlin, in June 1914. Ranged
against us were James Simon, the Cotton King, and Paul Nathan, his
right-hand man, directors of the Hilfsverein and the undisputed heads
of German Jewry. They were the usual type of Kaiser- Juden^ like
Albert Ballin and Max Warburg, more German than the Germans,
obsequious, superpatriotic, eagerly anticipating the wishes and plans of
the masters of Germany. They would not hear of Hebrew as the lan-
guage of instruction in the Technikum, They had three arguments
against it and in favor of German, in a sort of crescendo. First, German
was the great language of science and technology, while Hebrew was
practically useless in this respect. As a concession they were willing
to have gymnastics and drawing taught in Hebrew ! Second, the school
was under the German flag. Third — the climax — Dr. Zimmerman wanted
German ! Dr. Zimmerman had gone to all this trouble in obtaining the
concessions for the school on the tacit understanding that German would
be the language of instruction and that it would be a German institution.
In fact, Dr. Zimmerman was — according to an indirect remark made by
Mr. Simon — ^anxiously awaiting the result of this meeting. It would be a
feather in Dr. Zimmerman’s cap if he could point to another foothold of
German influence in the Near East. At this point I blew up and asked
hotly : “What the devil has Dr. Zimmerman got to do with our Technical
College in Palestine?” I saw genuine grief and terror on the faces of the
German Jews seated at the table. I went on, however, to warn them, that
if German was voted, nobody in Palestine would pay the slightest atten-
tion to the decision, since it would be entirely contrary to the spirit of
the new Palestine, and possibly also to the original intentions of the
donor. (The donor, though present, preferred to remain silent.) The
vote was taken, and I found myself in a minority of one.

I escaped from the meeting and telegraphed a digest of the proceed-

TRIAL AND ERROR

144

ings to Shmarya Levin, who was conducting the struggle at the Pales-
tinian end. Within twenty-four hours the teachers of the Technikum had
gone out on strike. The German Hiljsverein withdrew its support from
its schools, which the Zionist Organization had to take over. This was
the first time that we had been charged with the support and direction
of an educational system; it was, in a sense, the beginning of our
Hebrew school system in Palestine. Dr. Devin set out at once for Amer-
ica, to enlist the help of American Jewry, and obtained it in generous
measure.

This fight of ours against Zimmerman had wide bearings on our
political status, and stood me in good stead in time to come. Our enemies
in England did not hesitate to point out, during the First World War,
that we were a German organization because the headquarters of
the Zionist Executive were in Berlin. The incident just recorded pro-
vided one clear refutation of the baseless accusation. It was we, the
Zionists, who found the courage, weak and outnumbered as we were, to
refuse to become the cats-paws of the Germans in Palestine. We were
neither German nor French, we said, but Hebrew, and those that would
support our Hebrew culture would obtain our support in return. It
was an argument which Shmarya Levin used with great effect in
America.

The meeting of the Curator ium in June 1914, insignificant as it was in
the scale of international affairs, made it clear to me that war was in-
evitable. Not there and then, of course; not immediately — ^it never is
immediately — ^but at some time in the future. This minor manifesta-
tion of the bitter German determination for the extension of its power
at any and anybody's cost — ^perhaps because it was minor, perhaps be-
cause it showed Germany’s vigilance at every point — ^made a deep im-
pression on me. From Berlin I went straight to Paris, with the inten-
tion of inducing Baron Rothschild to buy up the Haifa Technikum,
lock, stock and barrel. But the Baron hesitated ; not because he did not
see, and sympathize with, my point of view, but because he, too, felt
obscurely that we were standing on the threshold of great and tragic
events, and that it would be a useless gesture to acquire the institute
at that time, since many years might pass before we would be able to
make use of it.

It is a strange thing to remember how these premonitions of ours
never crystallized into an actual belief. Yes, there would be a war
somewhere, sometime ; war was inevitable, but it had nothing to do with
the here and now. Or as far as the here and now were concerned, the
catastrophe would always be averted, the unbelievable inevitable would
not come to pass. Thus, in spite of many signs of impending storm, the
end of July found my wife, my little son, Benjy, and myself making
our usual preparations for a short holiday in Switzerland. We left

THE EVE OF THE WAR

145

Manchester according to plan on July 28, after making the necessary
inquiries about trains, and finding that everything was “normal.” We
stopped off in London and spent a few hours at Achad Ha-am’s home.
He, too, was anxious to believe that the storm would prove to be no
more than diplomatic, and that the exchanges of telegrams and con-
versations between the Great Powers would smooth things over. I re-
member calling at Cook’s office to ask about trains to Paris, and being
told again that everything was “perfectly normal.” Later it became
clear that even then the British Expeditionary Force was being trans-
ported secretly and in all haste across the Channel.

We arrived in Paris on the evening of July 31. The pandemonium which
reigned in the Gare du Nord was sufficient to show us the difference in
temper between the French and the British people. Here things were
decidedly not normal. We could not leave the train, and decided to
continue by the “Paris Ceinture” to the Gare de Lyon, the point of de-
parture for the south. The brief trip took an interminable time, with
constant stops, and frequent incursions of excited passengers, who filled
up every available inch of space in compartments and corridors, to the
point of suffocation. From fragments of conversation we gathered that
Jaures had been assassinated that evening in a boulevard cafe, and
everybody thought that with him had died the last chance of peace. He
alone might effectively have appealed to the workers of Europe not to
march, and his appeal alone might have moved his German friends.

At the Gare de Lyon, the train was practically taken by assault. By
great good luck we managed to keep our seats, and after a ghastly night
found ourselves in Switzerland. Two days later Germany declared war
against France.

CHAPTER 11

Shock and Recovery

Caught in Switserla7id — Paris in the First World War — Hope
Bom of Catastrophe — Back in Manchester — I Meet C. P. Scott
— I Am Introduced to Lloyd George — Herbert Samuel's Pro-
Zionist Stand — Asquith's Attitude — Obstacles Loom — Reintro-
duction to Balfour — Jewish Opposition to Zio 7 iis 7 n,

When the shock of the incredible had passed, when we managed
to absorb the fact of the war, the instinct of life reasserted itself. In
spite of what I recall now in the way of premonitions, it must be re-
membered that the First World War, unlike the Second, was not
preceded by a long series of absolutely unmistakable . warnings. The
diplomatic “incidents’’ had been as it were in the tradition. War was in-
evitable; but it had looked inevitable after Fashoda; it had looked in-
evitable again after the Agadir incident. Aggressive, pushful, arrogant —
Germany had been all that; but she had lacked the shamelessness of
nazism, and she had not given her hand away by a preliminary series
of monstrous misdeeds. There was a profound difference in our approach
to the two wars. When the Second World War finally “broke” — I am
reminded of the days when we used to wait for pogroms in Russia —
we knew at last, all of us, where we stood. It was not thus with the
First World War, the actual descent of which produced an effect of
stupefaction. Besides, there was an excuse in 1914, after nearly half a
century of comparative peace, for refusing to entertain the thought of an
immediate general war. It came, and it overwhelmed us with horror.
Then the horror receded. Its place was taken by a deep resentment — ^and
by hope. The war was here and it had to be won ; and after it was won
a better world had to be built on the ruins of the old. ‘

Switzerland, where my wife, my seven-year-old son and I were
marooned, was, of course, in a state of considerable excitement. We
reached the Rhone Valley, climbed up to the village where we had re-
served rooms, and arrived to find that everyone from the small pension
had been mobilized, and that the prospects of food and of service were of
the smallest. Still, we were there. We were “on holiday.” We promised
OUT landlord that we would try our best to substitute for the absent help,

146

SHOCK AND RECOVERY

H7

and we settled down for a few days to see how events would shape before
taking steps to return to England. The few days lengthened into a fort-
night before we succeeded in joining up with a party of other stranded
British citizens.

Again I recall some queer circumstances connected with that state of
indecision, of belief and disbelief, which preceded the First World War.
In Manchester the railroad office had told us that ever}i;hing was nomiah
All the same we had taken a passport along. What last-minute impulse
was it that moved me to arm myself with a passport — in those days
when no one thought of carrying such a document about? Was it some
echo of my youth in Russia? I had also taken along a supply of money
in gold. With my name — not to mention my appearance — I might have
had the devil of a job convincing the British Consul at Montreux that
I was a British citizen, with a perfect right to proceed to England with
my family.

Another three weeks passed before we found ourselves on a train
headed for Paris. The trip, which should have taken less than twelve
hours, lasted two nights and two days. At the French frontier, and at
several points within France, the passengers had to go to the Mairie,
or town hall, to have their papers examined. But it was not this alone
which made the passage through France indescribably depressing.

In one little town in the Juras, Dole — ^the birthplace of Pasteur — we
were held up for several hours, while train after train came westward
with German prisoners, French wounded and French refugees, and
train after train went eastward with fresh troops. The French were re-
treating from Alsace, and the Battle of the Marne was in full swing.

There was one spectacle so horrible, so devastating, that it has
haunted me ever since. As one of the trains drew in from the front there
looked out of a window some four or five women, disheveled, be-
draggled, with contorted and obscene faces, utterly inhuman in appear-
ance, so that we started back from the sight in horror. I asked an officer
who descended from the train who these terrifying creatures were. He
answered: '"These harpies are Frenchwomen who were caught on the
field of battle robbing the dead!” My little boy was frightened out of
his wits by the awful sight, and the image sank deep into my mind.

This was what we saw, and yet we said to ourselves the war was
going to be won. During those first few weeks of the precipitate French
and British retreat the. issue was by no means obvious. We reached
Paris at last, a Paris more beautiful than we had ever known it be-
fore, with every house beflagged and beflowered, but a Paris that was
pathetic, too, with its atmosphere of partings, of absent menfolk, and
of many women in mourning. The city was proud and collected, but
almost disturbingly quiet. We could not help comparing Paris with
the powerful and self-confident German capital which we had seen

148 TRIAL AND ERROR

only a few weeks before. The contrast was disheartening. And yet,
behind the dread, for no reason I could put my finger on, without a
genuine argument to offer, we had begun to feel that the French would
not give way. They had been caught unawares ; they were unprepared
and disorganized ; but they would come to. What they lacked in prepara-
tion and organization they would make up in courage and improvisation.

With this resurgence of hope came the longing for, the belief in,
something better after the war. We were afraid, my wife and I, to utter
this hope at first; and it was with diffidence that we mentioned to each
other the possibility that after the war, in a sensible reordering of the
world, we, too, the Jews, would find our lot made a little easier, and that
our need to rebuild our homeland would be recognized as part of the
world’s need. I found old Baron Edmond in Paris, in his magnificent
home, very sad, but very calm. Both his sons were away, in the army.
With real astonishment I heard him reiterate my own half-formulated
views. Yes, he said, things looked black, but we would win the war.
And this was the time for us to act, so that we might not be forgotten in
the general settlement. He urged me, immediately on my return to
England, to get in touch with British statesmen. It was his opinion —
and I agreed with him — ^that the war would spread to the Middle East,
and there things of great significance to us would happen.

Thus hope begets action and tends to justify itself. There was a short
period of preliminary fumbling. We got back to London, where we
were somewhat staggered to find the city still "'absolutely normal” — it
was that queer, significant "business-as-usual” phase of the war, corre-
sponding in a way with the ""phony war” period of a quarter of a cen-
tury later (and perhaps the cue for it in Hitler’s mind). I went to see
my friends, Achad Ha-am, Leon Simon, Samuel Landman — ^the last
one was the secretary of the Zionist Organization — and the Zionists of
the East End. We talked vaguely of great possibilities now opening, but
no concrete plan of action emerged. I cut my stay in London short
and proceeded to Manchester, arriving at the beginning of the college
term.

It was a dolorous home-coming. Many of the students and younger
instructors had gone into the army — ^as volunteers, of course, for con-
scription was (characteristically for England) only beginning to be
spoken of. There was an atmosphere of uncertainty; and I went about
with my hopes, waiting for my chance.

It came very soon, and, it would seem, by accident. Some two
months after my return I made the acquaintance of a man who was
to be of incalculable value to the Zionist movement — C. P. Scott, the
famous editor of the Manchester Guardian. Very possibly, if we had
not met thus, I might have gone to see him, for his sympathy with
Jewish ideals was widely known, and his personal and public influence

SHOCK AND RECOVERY

149

was enormous. As it was, the meeting occurred at a party in Withing-
ton, at one of the big German half- Jewish homes which took an interest
in my wife’s work in the Schools for Mothers — an enterprise later
adopted by the municipality, with my wife as a medical officer. When I
was presented to Mr. Scott, I saw before me a tall, distinguished-look-
ing gentleman, advanced in years, but very alert and attentive. He was
inquisitive about my origin and work, and also interested in the Polish
question.

He asked me : ^'Are you a Pole

I answered: '1 am not a Pole, and I know nothing about Poland.
I am a Jew, and if you want to talk to me about that, Mr. Scott, I
am at your disposal.”

He did want to talk to me about it, and in a few days I received an
invitation from him to visit him at his home. He was so unaffected, so
open, so charming that I simply could not help pouring out my heart
to him, I told him of my hatred for Russia, of the internal conflicts of
the Jews, of our universal tragedy, of our hopes and aspirations for
Palestine, of the little we had already done there, and of our almost
Messianic dreams — such they appeared then — ^for the future. He listened
with the utmost attention, and at the end of the rather one-sided conversa-
tion he said :

would like to do something for you. I would like to bring you
together with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lloyd George.” Then
he added: ''You know, you have a Jew in the Government, Mr. Herbert
Samuel.”

At this I exclaimed, almost rudely : "For God’s sake, Mr. Scott, let’s
have nothing to do with this man.” I thought, on general grounds, that
Herbert Samuel was the type of Jew who by his very nature was op-
posed to us. It will be seen that I was mistaken.

Nor did I guess with what thoroughness Mr. Scott would go into our
problems. He began to read up on Palestine, and I provided him with
a map of the country showing our settlements. On November 12, I
wrote to him: "Don’t you think that the chance for the Jewish people
is now within the limits of discussion at least? I realize, of course, that
we cannot 'claim’ anything, we are much too atomized for it; but we
can reasonably say that should Palestine fall within the British sphere
of influence/ and should Britain encourage a Jewish settlement there,
as a British dependency, we could have in twenty to thirty years a
million Jews out there, perhaps more; they would develop the country,
bring back civilization to it and form a very effective guard for the
Suez Canal”.

Early in December 1914, the interview with Lloyd George took place.
Mr. George, in his War Memories, dates his acquaintance with me,
and his interest in our movement, from the time (1917) when I came

TRIAL AND ERROR

150

to work for the Ministry of Munitions, and centers the relationship on
the subject of my chemical work for the Government during the second
half of the war. His narrative makes it appear that the Balfour Declara-
tion was a reward given me by the Government wdien Mr. Lloyd George
became Prime Minister, for my services to England. I almost wish
that it had been as simple as that, and that I had never known the, heart-
breaks, the drudgery and the uncertainties which preceded the Declara-
tion. But history does not deal in Aladdin's lamps. Actually, Mr. Lloyd
George's advocacy of the Jewish homeland long predated his accession
to the Premiership, and we had several meetings in the intervening years,
as will be seen below.

It became a practice with me, whenever I happened to be in London,
and Mr. Scott came up on the night train, to meet him at Euston Sta-
tion for breakfast. His usual greeting to me was : “Now, Dr. Weizmann,
tell me what you want me to do for you," and breakfast would pass
in conversation on Zionist affairs. On this morning of December 3 >
however, his greeting was : “We're going to have breakfast at nine o'clock
with Mr. Lloyd George."

There were present at this meeting, besides Lloyd George, Mr. Scott
and myself, Herbert Samuel, then President of the Local Government
Board under Asquith, and Josiah Wedgwood, then to me an unknown
figure. I was terribly shy and suffered from suppressed excitement,
knowing how much depended on this meeting. At first I remained a
passive listener. They talked about the war in a way that seemed to me
extraordinarily flippant. I was very, very serious minded, did not quite
appreciate English humor, and did not understand at first that behind
this seeming flippancy there was a deadly seriousness. Lloyd George
began to fire questions at me, about Palestine, about our colonies there,
about the number of Jews in the country and the number who could go
there. I answered as best I could. Then I had the surprise of my life
when Herbert Samuel interposed some helpful remarks. I had been
frightened out of my wits by his presence. It became clear that every
person in the room was favorably disposed, and an atmosphere was
created which warmed and encouraged me. Lloyd George pointed out
that I ought to talk with Balfour, as well as with the Prime Minister,
Herbert H. Asquith. At this point Herbert Samuel said — I could
hardly believe my ears — that he was preparing a memorandum on the
subject of a Jewish State in Palestine, to present to the Prime Minister,
How differently our dreams and plans impressed different people!
Here is what Asquith wrote in his diary on January 28, 1915 :

I received from Herbert Samuel a memorandum headed “The
Future of Palestine." He goes on to argue at considerable length and
with some vehemence in favor of the British annexation of Palestine,
a country of the size of Wales, much of it barren mountain and part

SHOCK AND RECOVERY

151

of it waterless. He thinks we might plant in this not very promising
territory about three or four million European Jews and that this
would have a good effect on those who are left behind. It reads almost
like a new edition of ‘Tancred” brought up to date. I confess I am
not attracted to this proposed addition to our responsibilities, but it is
a curious illustration of Dizzy’s favorite maxim, “Race is everything,”
to find this almost lyrical outburst from the well-ordered and me-
thodical brain of Herbert Samuel. [He added, a few weeks later] :
Curiously enough, the only other partisan of this proposal is Lloyd
George, and I need not say he does not care a damn for the Jews or
their past or their future, but thinks it will be an outrage to let the
Holy Places pass into the possession or under the protectorate of
“agnostic and atheistic” France.

This last bit is in queer contrast to a comment from a very different
quarter. I was in Paris again at the end of 1914, and Baron Edmond
proposed that I see Lord Bertie, the British Ambassador, who was a
friend of his — at least, he used to get very good dinners at the Baron’s
house. Lord Bertie received me rather coolly. What he thought
of the interview he tells in his diaries, which, like Asquith’s memoirs,
were published ten years later:

Edmond de Rothschild sent a co-religionist established in Man-
chester to “talk” about what I think an absurd scheme, though they
say it has the approval of Grey, Lloyd George, Samuel and Crewe:
they did not mention Lord Reading. It contemplates the formation of
Palestine into an Israelite State, under the protectorate of England,
France or Russia, preferably of England. . . . What would the Pope,
and Italy, and Catholic France with her hatred of Jews, say to the
scheme ?

Lord Bertie himself was, by the way, a Catholic. I do not know what his
subsequent attitude toward Zionism was. Asquith’s remained cold. He
visited Palestine in 1924-5, and wrote:

There are less than a million people in the country ... of whom about
one-tenth are Jews, the remainder Christians and Arabs, the Arabs
being three-fourths of the whole. I suppose you could not find any-
where a worse representation of any one of the three religions —
especially the Christians. The Jews are increasing (mainly from the
less civilized parts of Eastern Europe) as a result of the Zionist
propaganda, and no doubt are much better looked after and happier
here than they were in the wretched places from which they were
exported. But the talk of making Palestine a Jewish National Home
seems to me just as fantastic as it has always been.

Very odd indeed is the contrast between this report and Balfour’s on
his visit to Palestine, which took place a few months later, on the
occasion of the opening of the Hebrew University.

TRIAL AND ERROR

155

This gives only a hint of the obstacles we were to encounter — obstacles
based on the most contradictory grounds, irreconcilable with each other
or with realities : Bertie cited the Catholicism and the anti-Semitism of
the French, Asquith attributed Lloyd George's interest to the latter's
dislike of ‘‘French atheism"; Asquith implies that our human material
was of the wretchedest kind, unfit to build a land ; we were to hear be-
fore long that we threatened to build too well. Some of the opposition,
internal and external, I knew well ; some of it I guessed at ; some came
from utterly unexpected sources, but as to that, some of our help came
from quarters equally unpredictable.

Meanwhile, the interview with Lloyd George had gone off extraor-
dinarily well. The Chancellor promised to give the matter serious
thought. He noted that there would undoubtedly be strong opposition
from certain Jewish quarters, and he foretold, very accurately, that
Edwin Montagu, later Secretary of State for India, would be one of
our bitterest opponents, I made no attempt to conceal from Lloyd
George or the others the fact that the rich and powerful Jews were
for the most part against us; and I did not mention my talk with
Balfour in 1906. I thought that old history.

I heard nothing about the effects of the interview until months later,
and then indirectly, Lloyd George gave Mrs, James de Rothschild a
description of the meeting, and made two remarks which stuck in her
mind. He said: “When Dr. Weizmann was talking of Palestine he kept
bringing up place names which were more familiar to me than those on
the Western Front." Then he repeated what he had said in an aside to
Herbert Samuel: “When you and I are forgotten, this man will have
a monument to him in Palestine." I do not know, how reliable a prophecy
this will turn out to he, but should anyone ever take the fancy to put
up a monument to me, I hope he will be told that Palestine is the only
place where I should like to have it.

I followed up at once Lloyd George’s suggestion about seeing Balfour.
Professor Alexander, with whom Balfour was acquainted as a brother
philosopher, sent him a note reintroducing me and received in reply
a postcard on which Balfour had scribbled: “Dear Sam: Weizmann
needs no introduction. I still remember our conversation in 1906." When
I walked into Balfour's office in London — he was then First Lord of
the Admiralty — ^he hailed me with: “Well, you haven’t changed much
since we met." And, almost without pause, “You know, I was thinking
of that conversation of ours, and I believe that when the guns stop firing
you may get your Jerusalem."

I was thrilled to hear him say this, nonchalantly on the surface, but,
in the British way which I was beginning to understand, quite seriously.
I did not follow up this opening; the time and place were not propitious.

SHOCK AND RECOVERY

153

He invited me to his home in Carlton Gardens and there, a few days
later, we had a tremendous talk which lasted several hours.

It was not a practical conversation. It developed about abstract ideas
and principles. Mr. Balfour mentioned that, two years before, he had
been in Bayreuth, and that he had talked with Frau Cosima Wagner,
the widow of the composer, who had raised the subject of the Jews.
I interrupted Mr. Balfour and offered to tell him what Frau Wagner
had said. He agreed, and I told him that, in Frau Wagner’s opinion,
the Jews of Germany had captured the German stage, press, com-
merce and universities, and were putting into their pockets, only a
hundred years after emancipation, everything the Germans had built
up in centuries. Frau Wagner, I ventured to guess, resented very much
having to receive so much moral and material culture at the hands of
the Jews, and there were many like her. It was quite possible that Frau
Wagner did not even know the full extent of the services which Jews
had rendered Germany, particularly in the field of science; to what
degree they had been responsible for the growth of the German chemical
industries, to take only one field. (Later in this book I shall deal at
some length with the extraordinary chapter of Germany’s use of
Jewish scientific genius for power purposes which the scientists had
never contemplated.) I went on to say that I might be in agreement
with Frau Wagner as to the facts, but I was in entire disagreement
as to the conclusions to, be drawn from them. The essential point which
most non- Jews overlook, and which forms the crux of the Jewish
tragedy, was that those Jews who were giving their energy and their
brains to the Germans were doing it in their capacity as Germans, and
were enriching Germany, and not Jewry, which they were rapidly
abandoning. There was no contact whatsoever between the Jewish
grandees in Germany and the Jewish people. Indeed, they had to hide
their Judaism in order to be allowed to place their gifts at the disposal of
the Germans. Frau Wagner, however, did not recognize them as Ger-
mans, and we stood there as the most exploited and misunderstood of
peoples. To escape from this intolerable situation a definite status for
the Jewish people, in a Jewish homeland in Palestine, and under normal
conditions, was necessary. Those conditions were, primarily, the re-
birth of the language of the Jews and their culture.

And I went on to tell Balfour of the struggle, in 1914, against the
introduction of a foreign language into the Haifa Technical College.

We talked of the war, of course, and I spoke openly of my feelings
toward Russia. Mr. Balfour wondered how a friend of England could
be so anti-Russian when Russia was doing so much to help England
win the war. I gave him a description of what was taking place behind
the Russian lines, especially when the Russians advanced into new ter-
ritory — ^the pogroms, and the expulsions which made every Russian

154 TRIAL AND ERROR

victory a horror for the Jews — ^this while hundreds of thousands of
Jews were fighting in the Russian Army. It was news to him! Then
I spoke again of our Zionist hopes. At the close of our talk Balfour said :
'Tt is a great cause you are working for. You must come again and
again.^'

Not long after this talk I met Balfour again at a lunch given
by Lady Crewe, and the discussion turned on Russia and the Jews.
Balfour heckled me on my opinions, and I said then that the hopes re-
posed in Russia were mostly vain. Russia was corrupt and rotten, and her
contribution to victory would be small in the long run. Lady Crewe
who was a Rothschild — ^told James de Rothschild, subsequently, that I
seemed to be pro-German, and this of course simply terrified James de
Rothschild. I might say that it was always easier to speak frankly^ to
non- Jews than to Western Jews; there was less likelihood of being
misunderstood. Mrs. Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Balfour’s niece and biog-
rapher, herself an ardent, lifelong friend of Zionism, made some
very pertinent remarks in this connection, regarding one of our bitter-
est Jewish opponents of those days. ''Mr. [Edwin] Montagu could not
extend to his own people the sympathy he evinced later for nationalism
in India. He saw the specter of anti-Semitism in every country if its
Jews permitted themselves to dream of a territorial center or a national
political existence outside their present citizenships. Such aspirations in
English Jews he looked upon as traitorous disloyalty to their native
land. In the case of Jews living under less happy conditions he believed
that their relations with the countries of their birth would only be
worsened. This was not a point of view which ever appealed with great
force to the non-Jewish populations of the British Empire, many of
whom as, for example, the Scotch, are perfectly accustomed to combin-
ing strong separate racial consciousness with a wider loyalty.”

I was to find this point of view confirmed again and again in my
dealings with non-Jews; not only with members of minority "races” in
the British Empire — ^the Balfours were Scotch, of course — ^but with the
English themselves; and not only in Britain, but in America and in
other’ lands. Those contacts with C. P. Scott, Lloyd George and Balfour
were only the beginnings of our discoveries of friends. They were
enormously important, but hardly more so than those we established
with a host of lesser-known men inside and outside of governmental
circles. Among non-Jews there existed, as we have seen, opposition
to, perhaps even contempt for, our dreams, which might be challenged
on grounds of practicality, or of policy. I have not heard them chal-
lenged on grounds of incompatibility with good citizenship except
among Westernized Jews of a certain class pursuing a dream which
is infinitely less practical than ours — ^that of placating the anti-Semites.
The opposition of these Jews turned out to be costlier by far to us than

SHOCK AND RECOVERY

155

the reasoned objections of non- Jews ; and too, it being psychological
rather than reasonable, was implacable. If my prophecy to Mr. Scott
of a million Jews in Palestine at the end of twenty-five or thirty years
has fallen short by some 40 per cent, much of the blame is directly
attributable to the internal obstructionism of a small but influential
group of Jews. I shall have to deal with it at some length, for it is an
instructive part of our history, and it repeated itself at another crucial
period.

CHAPTER 12

Assimilationists and Zionists

Seeking a United Jewish Front — Assimilationist Jews and Mr,
Lticien Wolf — Their Active Ohstructionisni — Lord Reading —
General Snmts — ZangwiWs Aloofness — The Rothschilds Di-
vided on Zionism.

It was with a heavy heart, with a premonition of failure, that I
undertook, in the latter part of 1914, to negotiate with the representa-
tives of assimilated English Jewry for a United Jewish Front on the
problem of Palestine - 1 wrote at about that time to Dr. Judah L. Magnes,
who was playing a leading role in American Zionism: “I am not
sure yet whether w^e shall succeed in having a United Jewish Front
and a united Jewish action, but we are certainly trying our utmost to
secure it, and we are prepared to go a long w'ay toward meeting our
opponents.’’

The trouble was that our opponents would not go an inch toward
meeting us. Two years of negotiation produced from the anti-Zionist
Jews of England the following official statement of principle:

In the event of Palestine coming within the spheres of influence of
England or France at the close of the war, the Governments of these
powers will not fail to take account of the historic interest that country
possesses for the Jewish community. The Jewish population will be
secured in the enjoyment of civil and religious liberty, equal religious
rights with the rest of the population, reasonable facilities for immi-
gration and colonisation, and such municipal privileges in the towns
and colonies inhabited by them as may be shown to be necessary.

In effect, this statement means, at its generous best, that in view of
the historic connection between the Jews and Palestine, Jews in that
country ought not to be treated worse than the rest of the population.
If that represented a compromise with the Zionists, from what original
position had the British anti-Zionist Jews advanced?

At that time there existed in England what was known as 'The
Conjoint Committee,” composed of representatives of the Anglo-Jewish
Association (presided over by Lord Montagu) and the Board of

156

ASSIMILATIONISTS AND ZIONISTS 157

Deputies (presided over by Mr. David L. Alexander). Both of these
bodies consisted of old-fashioned, well-to-do assimilationist Jews, who
looked upon Judaism as a collection of abstract religious principles,
upon Eastern European Jewry as an object of compassion and philan-
thropy, and upon Zionism, as, at best, the empty dream of a few mis-
guided idealists. Their religious leader was Mr. Claude Montefiore, a
high-minded man who considered nationalism beneath the religious
level of Jews — except in their capacity as Englishmen. Their secular
representative, the secretary of the Conjoint Committee, was Mr. Lucien
Wolf, a man of considerable distinction, a historian of note, in whom
the opposition to Zionism was a mixture of principle and of personal
idiosyncrasy. Mr. Wolf was a gifted but embittered man. He had good
relations with the Foreign Office, where he was considered the spokes-
man of the Jews, that is, the Jew who came to ask for favors for his
co-religionists in other countries. He resented the rise of what he called
‘‘foreign Jews” in England, looked upon the Foreign Office as his
patrimony — he was of an old Anglo-Jewish family — and put me down
as a poacher, though I kept my contacts among government figures
quiet, and did not parade them even in front of my Zionist colleagues.
It was hard for Wolf, who knew how to handle the Foreign Office, to
look on, while Zionists came along and established connections in his
preserve ; the more so as Zionism was in his view a purely East Euro-
pean movement, with a certain following in the East End of London,
and beneath the notice of respectable British Jews. It was still harder,
in fact impossible, for him to understand that English non-Jews did not
look upon his anti-Zionism as the hallmark of a superior loyalty. It
was never borne in on him that men like Balfour, Churchill, Lloyd
George, were deeply religious, and believed in the Bible, that to them
the return of the Jewish people to Palestine was a reality, so that we
Zionists represented to them a great tradition for which they had
enormous respect. Certainly it could not get home to Lucien Wolf that
those English statesmen had no respect at all for the rich anti-Zionist
Jews. I remember Lloyd George saying to me, a few days before the
issuance of the Balfour Declaration: ‘T know that with the issuance of
this Declaration I shall please one group of Jews and displease another.
I have decided to please your group because you stand for a great idea.”
The same spirit animated men like Smuts and Milner, but not Reading
or Montagu; and not Lucien Wolf, to whom, for all his intelligence,
it was quite incomprehensible.

To give Mr. Wolf credit, he did realize that common work on the
part of the Conjoint Committee and the Zionists was impossible. He
gave three reasons, in a letter to Mr. Sokolow dated June 15, 1915.
They were:

i) That the Zionists do not consider civil and political emancipation

158 TRIAL AND ERROR

as a sufficiently important factor for victory over the persecution and
oppression of Jews, and think that such a victory can only be achieved
by establishing' a ‘legally secured home for the Jewish people/’

2) The Conjoint Committee considered as dangerous and provoking
anti-Semitism the “national postulate” of the Zionists, as well as special
privileges for Jews in Palestine.

3) The Conjoint Committee could not discuss the question of a
British protectorate with an international organization which included
different, even enemy, elements.

None of these objections — ^and I emphasize the last one — ever oc-
curred to the many Englishmen who were encouraging us so generously
in those days. But it is not easy to argue with a complex. Toward the
end of 1914, I had written to James de Rothschild: “I am afraid I
differ from my colleagues who think or who thought that it would be
possible to establish co-operation between the Zionists and the Conjoint
Committee. After having heard once Mr. Wolf’s views, it was clear to
me that such co-operation was impossible.” And not much later I put
the case fully to Dr. Moses Caster:

“There is no doubt these two bodies [the Conjoint Committee and the
Alliance Israelite of France] work together, and they pursue an almost
identical policy as far as our movement is concerned; this policy can
be summed up in one word: ‘opposition.’ Of course, we cannot object
to their position, much as we may deplore it. They have a perfect right
to hold antinational opinions, but the objectionable feature in their
policy — ^and it is this which fills me with great anxiety — is, that whereas
they themselves don’t do anything to further the Zionist cause, or even
the Palestinian cause, they will try their utmost to hamper us in our
work when the decisive moment comes. Of course their opposition is
illogical; if people say that they are not nationalist Jews, they have no
right to prevent other people from acting as nationalist Jews, especially
as they are a small minority living in the West, detached from the
masses in the East, from the joys and sorrows of those masses, from
their aspirations and ideals.”

My premonition that these men would become obstacles in the
decisive moment was only too well founded. They were directly re-
sponsible, as we shall see, for that ambiguity of phrasing in the Balfour
Declaration which was to plague us for more than a quarter of a
century. If they had been content with withholding their financial sup-
port, we on our side, would have been content to forget them. But
they discouraged others, by precept as well as example. They went out
of their way to influence British public opinion against us. They created
in Jewish life a tradition, as it were, of active obstructionism which
often came to life at critical moments of world and Jewish history.
There has, happily, been a profound change in the attitude of this group

ASSIMILATIONISTS AND ZIONISTS

159

in the last few years — it began with the formation of the mixed Jewish
Agency with which I deal in the second book. Two men, Louis Marshall
and Felix Warburg, of the United States, had no little share in bring-
ing about this change. Also, Palestine has ceased to be a matter for
theoretical debate. It is a living reality which it is impossible to oppose
now.

There were some exceptions even in the early days. Here and there
the opposition softened. Some who fought the Balfour Declaration or
were averse to it, accepted it later as a jait accompli. Not Edwin Mon-
tagu (at that time Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and later
Secretary of State for India), or Claude Montefiore, or Lucien Wolf.
But Lord Reading did. He did not become what might be called en-
thusiastic; he was half won over by the practical achievements which
followed in later years.

My first meeting with Reading, which took place in the middle of
the war, was a chilly one, and its effect on me was all the more painful
by its contrast with another first encounter on the same day. I had been
introduced in the morning to General Smuts, or, rather, I had gone
into his office with a letter of introduction. Utterly unknown to him,
I was received in the friendliest fashion, and given a most sympathetic
hearing. A sort of warmth of understanding radiated from him, and
he assured me heartily that something would be done in connection
with Palestine and the Jewish people. He put many searching questions
to me, and tried to find out how sincerely I believed in the actual
possibilities. He treated the problem with eager interest, one might
say with affection. The same morning, in the same government building,
I was introduced to Reading. It was as if I had run into an iceberg.
Frosty, remote, detached, indifferent, he seemed to resent my talking
to him on such subjects as Palestine and a Jewish homeland. But, as
I have said, he accepted the Balfour Declaration, and thawed a little
toward the movement. Later he became friendly with Sir Alfred Mond,
who after the war was one of our most generous collaborators. Read-
ing’s son, the present Marquis, married Mond’s daughter, and Reading
was induced to become the chairman of the Palestine Electric Corpora-
tion. Their younger generation, today, is with us heart and soul.

There were a few English ^'leading Jews,” however, who stood with
us from the beginning: Herbert Samuel, for instance, who was, indeed,
very effective. To begin with, he had the rank of a statesman, and
helped to a considerable extent to offset Edwin Montagu. More than
that, however, he guided us constantly, and gave us occasional indica-
tions of the way things were likely to shape. He was discreet, tactful
and insistent. He made the mistake of assuming that Asquith was
friendly, but a similar assumption in the case of Sir Edward Grey was
correct, and led to useful results.

i6o TRIAL AND ERROR

Zangwill was, or had been, a Zionist. In the early days of the move-
ment Herzl had leaned heavily on him, and he had made a great impres-
sion at one of the first Congresses by his brilliant attack on the^ grand
dukes’" of the ICA — ^the Jewish Colonization Association — ^which was
spending millions of pounds on futile attempts to settle masses of Jews
on the soil elsewhere than in Palestine. I remember how, at one of the
Congresses, Zangwill participated in the debate though he was not a
delegate. When his status was challenged Herzl, who was then presid-
ing, declared : 'When we have a genius in our midst, we will not take
into consideration the usual political formalities. Zangwill s under-
standing of Zionism was subtle, his devotion substantial. Yet, as we
have seen, he broke away from the movement, at the time of the
Uganda split, to found his Jewish Territorial Organization which,
while dividing our forces, achieved nothing in its search for another
territory than Palestine.

I tried hard to enlist his co-operation. We conferred in the autumn
of 1914, and on October 4 I wrote to him:

“Whatever the differences which, I am afraid, are still in existence,
I am nevertheless convinced that at the present critical moment we
must try to find the possibility for working together and save what
can be saved from this debacle which has befallen our people. ...

“The time has come to put forward our claim for the establishment
of an organized, autonomous Jewish community in Palestine. Nobody
doubts our intellectual achievements, nobody can doubt now that we
are capable of great physical efforts and that, were all the mental, ^ moral
and physical forces of Jewry concentrated on one aim, the building up
of a Jewish community, this community would certainly not lag behind,
and could stand comparison with any modern, highly civilized state. . .

My offer evoked no response. Zangwill never got over his rift with
us. In 1917 he indicated the possibility of a rapprochement, and in De-
cember of that year he spoke at the public meeting in the London Opera
House to celebrate the Balfour Declaration. His Territorial Organiza-
tion had become meaningless, and he dissolved it that year. However,
there was one fortunate result to our negotiations — the accession to our
forces of Dr. M. D. Eder, the distinguished psychiatrist. Zangwill him-
self remained outside, his attitude critical and unhelpful.

The House of Rothschild, perhaps the most famous family in Jewish
exilic history, was divided on the issue of Zionism. Of Baron Edmond,
of Paris, ^ I have already spoken at some length. His son James, an
Englishman, and a member of Parliament, was friendly to our idea
and I had met him when he joined the Hebrew University Committee
as his father’s representative. But in 1914 he was in the army, and
came to London only at rare intervals. His wife Dorothy, however,
was won over, and proved enormously helpful. She was close to Lady

ASSIMILATIONISTS AND ZIONISTS i6i

Crewe, who maintained a political salon in her wonderful house on
Curzon Street. Her husband, Lord Crewe, was a prominent politician,
a great liberal, and a friend of Asquith and Lloyd George.

Old Leopold Rothschild, whom I never met, was, like his wife,
furiously anti-Zionist, and remained so to the end. Sir Philip Magnus,
who was also anti-Zionist in his views, was interested for a time in
Palestinian colonization as pure philanthropy; he tried to make a dent
in Leopold Rothschild^s out-and-out opposition but without success. Of
Lady Rothschild’s almost pathological anti-Zionism I gave some indica-
tion when I told of her suppression of Balfour’s letter about me. Another
incident will help to illustrate her implacable hostility to us. When
one of her sons was killed in Palestine in the course of the war, she
went to the trouble of writing a letter to the Zionist Organization,
forbidding us peremptorily to "'make a case of it,” i.e., have it appear
that her son had died fighting for the liberation of Palestine! It had
never occurred to us to capitalize on her son’s death. But such was her
horror of Zionism that she trembled at the thought that we might
besmirch the name of her dead son with it. Her attitude never changed ;
and in part she transmitted it to her surviving sons, Anthony and Lionel.
They, in time, lost some of their hostility, and made their peace with
the Balfour Declaration. But they did not become friendly or particularly
helpful.

A third branch of the family vras that of Nathaniel, the Lord Roths-
child of England. His two sons, Walter and Charles, were friendly to
us. It was to Lord Walter that Balfour addressed the Declaration.
Charles might have been as helpful to us as his older brother, but he
was inclined to melancholy, and took no part in London life. He,
however, often visited us in London and was eager to learn the back-
ground of Zionism. His wife, Jessica, like Mrs. James de Rothschild,
did much to help us widen our contacts and enable us to place our
views before Englishmen of influence.

My contact with the English Rothschilds began in the flurry of
activity which followed our recovery from the shock of the war. In
November 1914, Baron Edmond had gone to Bordeaux; James de
Rothschild was away in the army. I drew a bow at a venture and wrote
to Mrs. James de Rothschild asking if I might see her. She replied at
once. I called, and we had a long conversation, which was resumed
the following day. She was interested, ready to help, but utterly innocent
of any knowledge of the subject. To her, whom I suspected of being
more interested than appeared, as to her sister-in-law, Mrs. Charles
de Rothschild, and their relative. Lady Crewe, I had to explain our
viewpoint, our philosophy, our hopes, in the most elementary terms.

I wrote to Lady Crewe: "We who come from Russia are born and
bred in an aspiration toward a new and better Jewish life. It must not

162 TRIAL AND ERROR

only be a comfortable life, but a Jewish one, a normal Jewish life, just
as the Englishman leads a normal English life. . . We who come from
Russia, where a most modern and perfect machinery is set up to crush
the Jewish body and soul, are least afraid of so-called anti-Semitism,
W^e have seen too much of it. But we are convinced that as long as the
Jew will be considered only as an appendix to someone else (sometimes
desirable and tolerated, sometimes, mostly perhaps, undesirable) there
will be trouble. We have the right to be treated as normal human
beings, capable of entering into the family of nations as an equal, and
to be masters of our own destiny. We hate equally anti-Semitism and
philo-Semitism. Both are degrading. We are conscious of the fact that
we have contributed our share toward progress and shall continue to do
so in a higher degree when we can live as free men in our own, free
country*''

This educational work bore fruit. To what extent it wrought a change
in the basic Jewish outlook of these men and women I cannot say ;
but they were willing to listen, and they did not recoil from some degree
of self-identification with the natural impulses of the Jewish masses.
Kindliness and sympathy often had to do duty for mtegral under-
standing, for the gulf was too wide, economically, socially, culturally,
to be completely bridged. The degrees of interest in the Jewish problem
■varied, of course. With some it was a matter of concern, with some, at
leaSft for a time, a genuine preoccupation. With one, alone, was it a
passion,, and that was Baron Edmond of Paris. A dozen men of his
stamp and his capacity to help would have changed the history of
Palestine, would have overcome completely the handicap of the anti-
Zicmist Jews and the hesitancies and the oppositions in the non-Jewish
world. We did not get them.

A great source of help, in those days, was the Manchester group of
English-bom Zionists of whom I have already spoken, Harry Sacher,
as leader writer on the Manchester Guardian, was an excellent link
with C P. Scott. It was Sacher who brought me together with Herbert
Sidebotham, the prominent journalist and publicist who was associated
with the Manchester Guardian and later (as “Scrutator”) with tlie
Sunday Times, Sidebotham wars interested in our ideas from the British
strategic point of view, always believing that a Palestine built up by
the Jews would be of importance for the British Commonwealth of
nations. Leonard Stein, who later became the very able secretary of
the World Zionist Organization, joined us after the war. I had heard
of him as a brilliant Oxford student (he had been President of the
Union), and as a potential Zionist; but the army swallowed him up. I
did not get to him until 1918 when, returning from Palestine, I found
him in a rest camp in Taranto, Italy, undergoing a cure for a bad case
of trench feet.

ASSIMILATIONISTS AND ZIONISTS 163

Then there were, o£ course, Israel Sieif and Simon Marks, with
whom I became increasingly intimate, and whose collaboration became
more and more important. With these young men it w^as possible to
speak more intimately than with the men and women in high places,
and the need to let off steam after “high’’ diplomatic negotiations was
sometimes overwhelming. If it was pleasant to find among some of the
Rothschilds a generous degree of sympathy, it was correspondingly
difficult to put up with the blind, immovable and utterly unprovoked
hostility of the “pure” philanthropists in a matter which, on their own
showing, was actually none of their business. I wrote to Sacher and
Simon in December 1914:

“The gentlemen of the type of Lucien Wolf have to be told the candid
truth and made to realize that we and not they are the masters of the
situation, that if we come to them it is only and solely because we
desire to show to the world a united Jewry and we don’t want to
expose them as self-appointed leaders.

“If anyone of their tribe had done the amount of work I did for the
University there would be no end of trumpet blowing. Starting with
nothing I, Chaim Weizmann, a Yid from Motelle and only an almost
professor at a provincial university, have organized the flower of
Jewry in favor of the prospect. . . .”

If there was some bitterness in this and in occasional other outbursts
of the kind, it had to do chiefly with the thought of how much more others
might have achieved if they had been willing.

CHAPTER 13

Internal Zionist Strains

Russian Zionists and the First World War — The Copenhagen
Bureau — Shmarya Levin in America — Brandeis and the Amer-
ican Provisional Zionist Executive — Vladimir Jabotinsky and
the Jewish Legion — Pinchas Rutenberg.

TThOSE ancient Zaonist dissensions from which my young English
friends were so happily free were of many kinds. There was, for instance,
the ghost of the old Uganda quarrel. It was no more than a ghost, but
it was troublesome. Zangwill remained alienated from us because of it.
Greenberg never forgot or forgave me my opposition to Herzl. Quarrels
which had lost their substance went on existing as habits in men who
could not adapt themselves to new conditions. There was, again, the
recollection of the division between ‘‘culturaF' and “practicaF" Zionism.
That, too, had created hostilities which outlived their meaning, but
continued to plague us.

But a new internal division now appeared in the ranks of the old
European Zionists, numbers of whom began to turn up in England
during the course of the war. They were all, like myself, under the
influence of Achad Ha-am; and again like myself, they were all anti-
Russian, that is, against czarist Russia. I have already told how my
own anti-Russian feelings were constantly getting me into hot water.
But apart from hating Romanov Russia, I did not have any faith in it as
a military ally, and whenever my university friends talked about ‘'the
great Russian steam roller'’ which was going to crush the Germans and
lumber through to Berlin, I freely indicated my skepticism. It is true
that the role of Russia in the First World War was, despite the corrup-
tion of the regime, considerable if brief. It neutralized for a time a part of
the German Army, and thus helped to prevent the capture of Paris. But I
held the idea that Russia was capable of bursting through into Germany
quite ridiculous.

In spite of all this I believed, as did Achad Ha-am, that the Allies
were going to win ; and it was here that the division arose. The Zionists
who were arriving in England from the Continent were not only anti-
Russian but believed, for the greater part, in the inevitability of a

164

INTERNAL ZIONIST STRAINS 165

German victory. This was not a result o£ wishful thinking. As in the
case of Ussishkin, their conviction flowed from very deep sources. For
the Jews and the intellectuals generally of Russia, the West ended at
the Rhine, and beyond that boundary there was only an unknown world.
They knew Germany, they spoke German, and they were vastly im-
pressed by German achievement, German discipline and German power.
They knew, as I did, that Russia was rotten through and through,
eaten up by graft, incompetence and indolence, and in their eyes Russia
did not deserve to win. Of course in this they were influenced by the
ghastly history of the Jews in Russia. Germany, it is true, was also
anti-Semitic, but German anti-Semitism did not show as much on the
surface. It bore a milder aspect. My friends did not look deeply enough,
and failed to read the trends in the country. Their view^s were not
shared, be it noted, by Jewish thinkers like Achad Ha-am and the
historian Dubnow. But into the attitude of my friends there also
entered the Polish-Russian disbelief in the power of the democracies
to stand up against mighty Germany.

The practical issue of this false reading of historic forces was that the
Zionists insisted on the neutrality of the Zionist Organization, and they
discouraged my first tentative steps to get in touch with the British
statesmen. To give expression to this neutrality the old Actions Com-
mittee, whose headquarters were in Berlin, called a conference in
Copenhagen, which was neutral territory, and proposed to establish new
headquarters there.

I was sharply opposed to leaving power in the hands of the old
Executive. Shmarya Levin, then in America, had participated in the
formation of the American Provisional Executive Committee for Zionist
Affairs, with Mr, — soon after Justice — Brandeis at its head; and I
supported him without reserve. I wrote to him on October 18, 1914:

‘T consider the activities of the old Actions Committee impossible and
even dangerous for the future of our cause. Taking into account the
present political situation, I cannot help thinking that the conference at
Copenhagen would prove absolutely useless for our movement, and
actually harmful for the future. The American Provisional Executive
Committee should be given full power to deal with all Zionist matters,
until better times come.’' I believed that our destiny lay with the
Western democracies. I wrote further to Levin: ‘'It is in the interests of
the peoples now fighting for the small nationalities to secure for the
Jewish nation the right of existence. Now is the time w^hen the peoples
of France, Great Britain and America will understand us. . . . The
moral force of our claims will prove irresistible ; the political conditions
will be favorable to the realization of our ideal. But we must be ready
for this moment when it comes. We must unite the great body of
conscious Jews in Great Britain, America, Italy and France.’’

i66 TRIAL AND ERROR

When the bureau in Copenhagen was actually opened, I cut myself
off from the European Zionists, even though they had transferred
themselves to neutral territory. I wrote to the bureau asking that no
mail be sent to me. I had to break with some of my closest friends,
like Motzkin and Victor Jacobson. They had, it is true, one tremendous
but shortsighted argument against me — ^Russia ! Day after day, reports
came to us of the pogroms which accompanied the advance of the Russian
armies, pogroms which made the Jews in the small towns and^ villages
long for the coming of the Germans as liberators! Today it seems
inconceivable that such a situation should ever have existed. So deep
were the anti-Russian feelings of the old Executive, that when the
Balfour Declaration was published and we arranged to celebrate the
triumph with a public meeting in the London Opera House^ Tschleiiow,
then in London, objected to it as a breach of Zionist neutrality! I was
looked upon as a crank and an Anglo-maniac. Oddly enough, this
attitude continued, among certain groups, even after the war. That the
Bolsheviks in Moscow should accuse me of being a British agent was
part of the day’s work ; but that Zionists should accuse me of being ready
to sell out the movement to England was rather hard to bear.

My disassociation of myself from the Copenhagen Bureau had in-
teresting and far-reaching results. One of the officials of the Copen-
hagen Bureau was Martin Rosenbluth, who was in England, in the
employ of the Organization, at the beginning of the Second World War,
some twenty-five years later, and was interned as an enemy alien.
As the President of the Zionist Organization I was asked to appear
before the judge who examined the case. The judge was friendly and
reasonable ; he said that one of the things that weighed against Rosen-
bluth was the fact that during the First World War he had been
employed in the Copenhagen office of the Zionist Organization, and in
touch with German officers. I suggested that Rosenbluth, being a German
officer, was of course loyal to his native country, but he would certainly
not have let himself be used in his Zionism by the Germans, whereupon
the judge said: ^^But Dr. Weizmann, you couldn’t have known what
was happening then.” I asked what made him say that, and he answered :
“Why, you cut yourself off from the Copenhagen Bureau as soon as it
opened !” The record of my letter had, it seems, been kept by Scotland
Yard, and the action protected me for decades. It must have weighed
a great deal with the authorities when I was invited to work for the
Admiralty in the course of the First World War.

All my common sense had told me that I had to set myself completely
right from the outset, whatever misinterpretation might be put on my
action by the Zionists. I could not help thinking of a story out of my
boyhood in Pinsk. We had in the city a feldsher — a licensed healer
without a medical degree — ^to whom our servant went one day with

INTERNAL ZIONIST STRAINS

167

a badly cut finger. The first thing he did was to give her a big dose of
castor oil. ‘‘Come what may,” he explained, 'let's at least be sure that
we have to do with a clean stomach,” In breaking with the Copenhagen
Bureau I wanted to make sure of a clean record; for though I was
violently anti-Russian, I was just as violently anti-German and pro-
British.

Tschlenow and Ussishkin were typical instances of unhappy Russian
Zionists who did not believe, until the last moment, that England
would win the war. But there were exceptions, and the most notable
among them were Vladimir Jabotinsky and Pinchas Rutenberg. Of the
former I have already written; of both of them I shall have much to
say when I come to deal with the reconstruction of Palestine, and with
cleavages in the Zionist movement far deeper than the fortuitous political
ones arising from the war — cleavages going down to the basic ethos of
Judaism and Zionism, of State building, of social ideals and social
concepts. My personal relationship with both Jabotinsky and Rutenberg
has been generally misunderstood in Zionist circles, and the misunder-
standing has served to obscure issues of more than personal im-
portance.

The opening of the war found Jabotinsky in Alexandria, as the corre-
spondent of the Russkiya Vyedomosti, and there, together with Trumpel-
dor, he conceived the idea of forming, out of several hundred young
Jews who had fled to Egypt from Palestine, a Jewish battalion to flght
on the side of the Allies. This was the beginning, in fact, of the famous
Zion Mule Corps which served so brilliantly in Gallipoli. However,
before the corps was formed, Jabotinsky was already in France, Italy
and England, with the larger ambition of forming several Jewish
regiments. He came to me, too, and I thought his idea good, and in
spite of the almost universal opposition I decided to help him.

It is almost impossible to describe the difficulties and disappointments
which Jabotinsky had to face. I know of few people who could have stood
up to them, but his pertinacity, which flowed from his devotion, was
simply fabulous. He was discouraged and derided on every hand. Joseph
Co wen, my wife, who remained his friend until his death, and I, were
almost alone in our support of him. The Zionist Executive was of course
against him; the non-Zionist Jews looked on him as a sort of portent.
While he was working for the Jewish Legion we invited him to stay
with us in our London house, to the discontent of many Zionists.

We became very friendly in those days. Some time before I estab-
lished myself permanently in London, I used to room with him in a little
street in Chelsea — 3 Justice Walk — and we had a chance now and again
to talk at length, and to indulge in some daydreaming. We had one
memorable conversation which opened my eyes. We were beginning otp:
work, and I said : "You, Jabotinsky, should take over the propaganda of

i68

TRIAL AND ERROR

the movement, oral and literary. You are a genius in that field/^ He
looked at me almost with tears in his eyes. ‘'Now, Dr. Weizmann,” he
said, “the one thing I am fitted for is political work, and here you are
trying to shove me into the entirely wrong path.”

It startled me beyond words, for political work was precisely what he
was unfit for ; and above all he was unfit to negotiate with the British.
In spite of his fabulous pertinacity, he was impatient in expression. He
lacked realism, too. He was immensely optimistic, seeing too much and
expecting too much. Nor did all his disappointments in behalf of the
Jewish Legion ever cure him of these qualities.

Jabotinsky succeeded in building up his Jewish regiments and came
out with one of them to Palestine when I was there, in 1918. He was
promoted to the rank of captain. At the end of that year, when I was
leaving the country, he became the political officer of the Zionist Organ-
ization. I was of course not at all easy in my mind about this appoint-
ment, but Dr. Eder was there with him, and I thought the combination
would not be too bad.

Pinchas (or Peter) Rutenberg, too, first came to me in connection
with the founding of a Jewish legion in the First World War. He
turned up at our house, in Manchester, in the late autumn of 1914. It
was a dark night, the lights were all out, and, since house service had
already been cut short, we had made ourselves a little supper in the
kitchen. The bell sounded, and when I went to open it, I saw standing in
the doorway a dim, bulky figure from which issued, in a low, deep voice,
greetings, in Russian. I had no idea who the man was, and even when he
told me his name, it conveyed nothing to me. I was not well versed in the
history of the Russian Revolution. I did, of course, know of the famous
affair of Father Gapon, the agent provocateur of the first Russian
revolution, 1905, who had been caught by the revolutionaries and
strangled ; but I did not know of the part which Rutenberg had played
in it. So when this strange, bulky man came to my house in the darkness,
speaking Russian in a low, conspiratorial voice, I was uneasy. After I
had read the letter of introduction from Marcel Cachin, the French
Socialist, who was then, I think, in the government, I was somewhat
reassured. But I was still on my guard. I was known as an anti-Russian,
and strange Russians were not in my line.

He came in, and began to unfold his views, speaking of Russia, of the
Jewish people, of a Jewish army and of Palestine. He impressed me at
once as genuine, but his views on the Jewish problem and on Palestine
were superficial ; he had obviously not given much thought to the subject.
In the midst of the conversation he made a remark which afterward
recurred to me as odd in the extreme. He said he was in a hurry, and
was anxious to get back to London in time for Yom Kippur. Why a
revolutionary should have Yom Kippur on his mind I did not under-

INTERNAL ZIONIST STRAINS 169

stand. However, it happened that I was going up to London shortly
after Yom Kip pur, so we decided to meet at the house of Achad Ha-am.
Arriving there a little before him, I learned something of his antecedents.

When I got to know Rutenberg a little better, I was impressed by his
energy and by his ardent desire to do something for the improvement of
the Jewish position; but though I appreciated his genuineness, I was
depressed by his lack of insight into our problems. His great work for
Palestine, the harnessing of the Jordan for electricity, came in later
years. For the time being his activity was concentrated on the Jewish
army. In the interim he disappeared. He had gone back to Russia, and
ranged himself with Kerensky, and we heard of him as the governor of
Petrograd. Then he disappeared again, when the Bolsheviks came into
power. He was heard of in Odessa, where he was helping to evacuate
anti-Bolsheviks. Finally, after the war, he turned up again in London.
It is my impression that if Kerensky had remained in power, Ruten-
berg would not have come back to Jewish life. He was a revolutionary by
nature, and the Revolution always beckoned to him.

However, he did come back, and set about his tremendous plan for
the electrification of Palestine. But the early picture would not be com-
plete if I did not mention that when he came to us he was completely
devoid of any contacts with Jewish life. The Zionists were the only ones
who listened to him — and that in connection with his plans for the har-
nessing of the Jordan. Had it not been for the Zionists he would not have
obtained his first couple of thousand pounds for the preliminary survey
work in Palestine.

Rutenberg was a man of immense energy, tact and ability in dealing
with the many Jewish factors he encountered, which was the more sur-
prising in view of his lack of Jewish background. As a type he, the
practical engineer, stood midway between Jabotinsky and Achad Ha-am.
He saw the difficulties before him, but he did not suffer from explosive
repressions, like Jabotinsky, or from excessive proneness to criticism,
like Achad Ha-am. He came from the revolutionary school, and had
been trained in adversity. But his singlemindedness was what captured
people, and as his contacts increased he grew into them. He himself made
the impression of a tremendous turbine harnessed to a single great pur-
pose. Not being acquainted with Jewish ways, he often mistook natural
skepticism for indifference, and, being centered on his one idea, he did
not realize that the Zionists were weighted down with many worries,
that they were entering on a course of action in Palestine for which they
had had little preparation.

During the first period of my collaboration with Rutenberg and
Jabotinsky, that is, during the formation of the Jewish legion, as it came
to be called, they did have to face the oppositiop of the official Zionist
bodies, but they could always count on Cowen, myself and one or two

TRIAL AND ERROR

170

others. The Russian Zionists, with whom we kept in touch, were solidly
against them. The Copenhagen Bureau, the center of our neutrality,
denounced the plan, and forbade all Zionists to take an active part in it.
My support of the army took on, to my distress, an aspect of rebellion
at a time when, seeking — ^though without much hope — ^unity in the Jew-
ish world, I was breaking it in the Zionist world.

This was added to the burden of my sin of ‘"unneutrality,’' already
heavy enough in the eyes of some Zionists. Samuel Pevsner, who was at
that time in America, wrote me: “We are following your activity with
the greatest sympathy” ; but Shmarya Levin, and Dr. Judah Leib Magnes,
considered my political activity in England, discreet as it was, responsible
for the persecutions of the Jews in Palestine, and required me to stop it
immediately, I wrote to Magnes on January i, 1915 ' I did, I did

not commit our Zionist Organization, did not pledge myself or any other
Zionist to any definite course without the sanction of the Executive. . . .
The fact that British statesmen are favorable to Zionist ideals, the fact
that British statesmen would like to see Palestine occupied or protected
by England, is, of course, very well known and is discussed in the press,
has been for the last three months, and I cannot hold myself or anybody
responsible for it.”

At the same time, in order to obtain official sanction for my activities,
I was urging that all available members of the Inner Actions Committee
should come over to London as soon as possible.

This was the egg dance of internal Zionist politics during the First
World War.

CHAPTER 14

Working for the Government

A Much-Needed Change — Mr. Churchill Places a Large
Order — I Leave Manchester University — We Move to London
— Our Second Son^ Michael, Is Born — Science and Zionism
Mingle.

My LIFE had become extremely complicated, for my manifold
Zionist activities were carried on side by side with an increasingly
heavy schedule at the university. The young instructors were gone, and
I had to do part of their work. On top of everything else I enlisted in
a training corps, and learned to form fours. I had to go to Paris occa-
sionally, and to London quite often. My means were limited, and I was
torn between conflicting duties. I would return from an afternoon visit
to London late in the night, and snatch a few hours sleep before pro-
ceeding to my classes; or else I would take the night train, sit up all
the way to Manchester, and take up my daily tasks immediately on my
arrival. Much of the time, what with the travel, the interviews, the
conferences, the correspondence, the laboratories and the lecture rooms
I moved about in a sort of dreamlike trance. It was threatening to become
more than I could stand.

Then, suddenly, a drastic change came into my life, and the source
of it was my scientific and not my political work. On my return from
Switzerland at the end of August 1914, I found a printed circular
on my desk, from the War Office, inviting every scientist in possession
of any discovery of military value to report it. I promptly offered the
War Office my fermentation process, without remuneration. I received
no reply. I nevertheless continued my studies on fermentation, without
feeling that they had any immediate practical application. One day, in
the spring of 1916, I received a visit from Dr. Rintoul, the chief research
chemist of Nobel’s, the big explosive manufacturers, located at Ardeer,
in Ayrshire. What the original purpose of his visit was I do not know.
We gossiped about the war, and then the conversation turned to my
researches, which I described to him- in detail. When I had ended, he
said to me, thoughtfully: '‘You know, you may have the key to a very
important situation in your hands.” Still in the dark as to what he had

171

172

TRIAL AND ERROR

on his mind, I merely replied: “Dr. Rintoul, excuse me, you happen
to be leaning against the situation

Dr. Rintoul turned to inspect the apparatus, then asked for my
laboratory notebooks. He seemed pleased with the results described in
them, and there and then offered to acquire the process on behalf of
his firm. I was rather staggered — 3 .nd very much delighted; for Nobel's
was one of the biggest firms in England. Again it was like something
in a dream. For the offer was a good one, and it promised to bring
much-needed relief into a situation which had become almost impossible.
It was not the physical and mental strain alone which was wearing
me dowm; it was a feeling of frustration. I felt out of things in Man-
chester. The center of my Zionist work was London. My Manchester
friends were enormously helpful, but they could not, with the best will
in the world, substitute for the capital. And here was an offer which
opened big vistas for me.

That same day Dr. Rintoul telephoned to Scotland and asked the
director of the plant, a Mr. Rogers, to come down to Manchester,
together with two or three other chemists. My experiments were
repeated, the results found satisfactory. Then followed a discussion of
the terms of the contract, which were excellent. I did not, by the way,
even have the patent on my process, for I had never appreciated its
technical importance. Nor did I publish anything on it until much later.

The dazzling contract never went into effect. Very soon after it was
negotiated, there was a big explosion in the Ardeer plant, and my
hopes went up with most of the buildings. It was going to take them
a long time, they wrote me, to reconstruct their facilities, and they had
such a heavy backlog of orders that it would be impossible for them
to undertake anything new. They asked me to release them, which I
did at once. Some time later they brought the matter to the attention
of the Government.

So it came about that one day in March 1916, I returned from a
visit to Paris to find waiting for me a summons to the British Admiralty,
where I was to see Sir Frederick L. Nathan, the head of the powder
department. He explained to me that there was a serious shortage of
acetone, which was the solvent in making cordite. Without this solvent
it would be necessary to make far-reaching changes in the naval guns.
I was invited to work on this problem. For a few months I had to carry
the double responsibility of teaching in Manchester and putting up a
pilot plant in London. My week was split into two parts : four days
at the university, three in London. I traveled backward and forward
by night, to save time. It was nerve racking, and not too productive.
And so the university was requested to relieve me of most of my
teaching work, and I was engaged by the Government. To finish the

WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT 173

business, my new employers brought me into the presence of the First
Lord of the Admiralty, who was at that time Mr. Winston Churchill.

Mr. Churchill, then a much younger man, was brisk, fascinating,
charming and energetic. Almost his first words were : 'Well, Dr. Weiz-
mann, we need thirty thousand tons of acetone. Can you make it?’' I was
so terrified by this lordly request that I almost turned tail. I answered:
"So far I have succeeded in making a few hundred cubic centimeters
of acetone at a time by the fermentation process. I do my work in a
laboratory. I am not a technician, I am only a research chemist. But,
if I were somehow able to produce a ton of acetone, I would be able
to multiply that by any factor you chose. Once the bacteriology of the
process is established, it is only a question of brewing. I must get hold
of a brewing engineer from one of the big distilleries, and we will set
about the preliminary task. I shall naturally need the support of the
Government to obtain the people, the equipment, the emplacements
and the rest of it. I myself can’t even determine what will be required.”

I was given carte blanche by Mr. Churchill and the department, and
I took upon myself a task which was to tax all my energies for the
next two years, and which was to have consequences which I did
not then foresee.

I had to start by building up what is now called a pilot plant, some-
thing quite new of its kind. It meant a great deal of pioneering in a
field in which I had had no experience whatsoever. First, then, we
found a place where we could carry out our first large-scale experiment.
It was the Nicholson gin factory in Bromley-by-Bow. We ran into a
lot of trouble trying to find shortcuts and oversimplify the process. For
instance, we thought we might be able to dispense with aseptic condi-
tions, which were costly and time consuming. Then we discovered this
to be impossible. It took us six or seven months to apply the process on a
half-ton scale fairly regularly and with consistently satisfactory results.
From that point we reached out for a larger scale, and the Admiralty
decided on a twofold plan. It would build a new factory in one of its
arsenals, in Holton Heath, near Poole, Dorsetshire, and it would take
over the large distilleries and adapt them, wherever possible, to our
process.

The double plan entailed an enormous amount of work. The distilleries
were scattered throughout England, Scotland and Ireland. A group of
chemists had to be trained in the process. I took over the laboratory of
the Lister Institute in Chelsea, and there I began to train a number
of young people in this branch of chemistry. From Chelsea I sent them
out to the various distilleries. The young English scientists were ex-
cellent men to work with, but the distilleries were neither very happy
about the conversion of their plants, nor particularly helpful. Indeed one
in particular gave us a lot of trouble. However, this was not all. When

TRIAL AND ERROR

174

the process was in full swing, we were almost forced to suspend opera-
tions because of the grain shortage. The food controller could not let
us have what we needed — nearly half a million tons of maize. All maize
had to be imported from America, and this was the time of the unre-
stricted U-boat campaign. I tried to substitute chestnuts as the source
of the starch, and in part succeeded. The results were not as satisfactory,
nor was the supply of chestnuts large enough. We tried wheat, of
course, but its yield was lower than that of maize, and since wheat,
though grown in England, was not very plentiful either, we were again
confronted with the importation problem. Under the pressure of these
conditions the production of acetone was shifted to Canada and America
— America had by this time entered the war. Some was manufactured
in France, some in India, from rice. In Canada the process was particu-
larly successful under the direction of a former pupil of mine, Herbert
Speakman, now professor of biological chemistry at the University of
Toronto. Speakman organized the work with great skill. He had good
material to work with and excellent men. The first American plant for
this method of producing acetone was built at Terre Haute, Indiana.

I received, later on, a number of lucrative offers from the Admiralty,
and, again, from the Ministry of Munitions when it was headed by
Lloyd George. I refused them, and asked instead for a salary about
equal to what my wife and I had been earning till then in Manchester.
For it soon became evident that I would have to give up my university
work altogether and move permanently to London. It was in the
middle of 1916 that I severed my connections with Manchester, tem-
porarily as I then thought, but, as it turned out to be, permanently.

After the war my patents were released and taken over by Commercial
Solvents, one of the great chemical concerns of America. The Govern-
ment gave me a token reward for my work, amounting to about ten
shillings for every ton of acetone produced, a total of ten thousand
pounds. The decision was reached by a committee under the chairman-
ship of Reginald McKenna.

The Government built a laboratory for me in 1916, and we came to
London. I had to leave my wife, with my son, in Manchester, as she
was still medical officer of the Infant Clinic, and owing to the shortage
of medical help could not be released. She joined me early in 1917. We
took a house at ’67 Addison Road, and my wife made a charming and
attractive home of it. It was in this house that our second boy, Michael,
was bom, November 16, 1917. It was not a large place, but it soon
became a center not only for the Zionists, but for a great many British
political figures. My work brought me in touch with all sorts of people,
high and low, in the British government. Balfour succeeded Churchill in
the Admiralty, Lloyd George became Minister of Munitions, and I had
much to do with his board, for a great many problems not directly

WORKING FOR THE GOVERNMENT 175

connected with acetone flowed into my laboratories. When the first period
of experiment and construction was over, I had a certain amount of
leisure, as well as more opportunity to see British statesmen, than had
been the case when I lived in Manchester. The center of gravity of my
life shifted once again toward my Zionist interests, and from this point
on the tide of events moved rapidly toward one of the climactic points
in the history of the movement and, I believe, in the history of the Jewish
people — ^the issuance of the Balfour Declaration.

CHAPTER 15

Toward the Balfour Declaration

The Deeper Meanhig of Zionism — Hesitancy of British States-
men — Jewish Palestine in the First World War — British
Statesmen and Jewish Anti-Zionists — England's Pro-Zionism
in First World War — Colonel Meinertzhagen — Sir Mark
Sykes — We Publish Zionism and the Jewish Future — Herbert
Sidebotham — Our Propaganda Widens,

TThE reader will remember that from the beginning I had looked upon
Zionism as a force for life and creativity residing in the Jewish masses.
It was not simply the blind need of an exiled people for a home of its
own. I could not agree with Herzl that the Judenjiot, the tragedy of
Jewish homelessness, persecution and poverty, was sufficient to account
for the Zionist movement, and was capable of supplying the necessary
motive power for the creation of a Jewish homeland. Need alone is
negative, and the greatest productions of man spring from an affirmation.
Jewish homelessness was not just a physical discomfort; it was also,
and perhaps in larger measure, the malaise of frustrated capacities. If
the Jewish people had survived so many centuries of exile, it was not
by a biological accident, but because it would not relinquish the creative
capacities with which it had been entrusted.

For assimilated Jews all this was a sealed book; in their complete
alienation from the masses, the source of inspiration, they had not the
slightest concept of the inner significance, the constructive moral-
ethical-social character, of Zionism. They looked upon it — Lucien Wolf,
for instance — ^as a primitive tribalism. They felt themselves, when they
were men of an ethical turn of mind like Claude Montefiore, called
upon to ‘'rescue'' Judaism from Zionism, or to rescue it just so. It is
worth noting, in this connection, that in the Second World War the
only part of the entire Mediterranean basin on which the United Nations
could count without reservation for full co-operation in the war against
nazism and fascism, was Jewish Palestine. It would be wrong to ascribe
this to the peculiar position of the Jews, who could never hope to come
to terms with Hitlerism. The reverse is equally true; it was Hitlerism
which could not come to terms with fundamental Jewish democracy.

176

TOWARD THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 177

The character assumed by Jewish Palestine was a projection of the
Jewish national, ethical and social content. In a war for the assertion
of world democratic principles, a Jewish Palestine could not have played
any other role, whatever the attitude of antidemocratic forces toward
the Jewish people.

The deeper meaning of Zionism must not be lost sight of in the record
of practical steps, of day to day strategic adjustments, which led up to
the granting of the Balfour. Declaration, and which accompanied future
developments. I am reverting now to the common accusation that
Zionism was nothing but a British imperialistic scheme, the Balfour
Declaration a quid pro quo, or rather payment in advance, for Jewish
service to the Empire. The truth is that British statesmen were by no
means anxious for such a bargain. I wrote to Mr. C. P. Scott, in March

1915 ‘ .

“The British cabinet is not only S3^mpathetic toward the Palestinian
aspirations of the Jews, but would like to see these aspirations realized.
I understand Great Britain would be willing even to be the initiator of
a proposal to that effect at the peace conference. But at the same time
Great Britain would not like to be involved in any responsibilities. In
other words, they would*' leave the organization of the Jewish common-
wealth as an independent political unit entirely to the care of the Jews.
At the same time there is a view prevalent that it is not desirable that
Palestine should belong to any great power.

“These two views are in contradiction. If Great Britain does not wish
anyone else to have Palestine, this means that it will have to watch it
and stop any penetration of another power. Surely, a course like that
involves as much responsibility as would be involved by a British pro-
tectorate over Palestine, with the sole difference that watching is a much
less effective preventative than an actual protectorate. I therefore thought
that the middle course could be adopted . . . viz; the Jews take over the
country; the whole burden of organization falls on them, but for the
next ten or fifteen years they work under a temporary British pro-
tectorate.'’'

In effect, this is an anticipation of the mandate system. Indeed, had
the original idea, or the mandate system, been fully implemented, the
service which Jewish Palestine, alone among the Mediterranean peoples,
rendered to the cause of democracy in the Second World War would
have been proportionately greater. I wrote, in the same letter, of the
bond which such a Palestine would create between England and the
Jewish people, and added : “A strong Jewish community on the Egyptian
flank is an efficient barrier for any danger likely to come from the north."
There was a time, in the Second World War, when this danger was
very real. If it did not materialize, it does not cancel the value of the
thirty thousand Jewish soldiers who volunteered from Palestine for

178 TRIAL AND ERROR

service with the United Nations armies of the Near East and Europe,
or of the considerable role which Palestine played in the war as a minor
arsenal of democracy.

I wrote further: ‘‘England . . . would have in the Jews the best
possible friends, who would be the best national interpreters of ideas in
the Eastern countries and would serve as a bridge between the two
civilizations. That again is not a material argument, but certainly it
ought to carry great weight with any politician who likes to look fifty
years ahead.^’ As to what actually happened I refer the reader to the
second book of this volume.

From part of the foregoing it is clear that England's connection with
Palestine rested on the idea of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine ; but for
the idea of a Jewish Homeland, England would not have entertained
the thought of a protectorate — or later of a mandate — over Palestine.
In short, England felt she had no business in Palestine except as part
of the plan for the creation of the Jewish Homeland. Always (as we
have already seen in the case of Asquith) there was a shying away from
the assumption of “responsibility" bound up with Palestine as such.
I wrote to Mr. Scott at about that time :

“Sir E. Grey is in full sympathy with the Jewish national ideals, as
connected with the Palestinian scheme, but would not like to commit
himself as to the advisability of establishing a British protectorate over
Palestine. He thinks that such a step may lead to difficulties with
France and, secondly, may go against the opinion of a certain school of
liberals in this country. He would, therefore, be inclined to look for a
scheme by which the Jews would not lay any additional burden on
England."

These hesitancies, as we know, were later to introduce a note of un-
certainty into the British attitude toward the Jewish Homeland. How
was it that the decision was actually made, and why was the pledge
actually given? One factor, perhaps the decisive one, was the genuine
appeal which the idea itself made to many of the leaders of Britain. One
of the differences between that time and ours is in the approach to State
problems. The so-called realism of modern politics is not realism at all,
but pure opportunism, lack of moral stamina, lack of vision and the
principle of living from hand to mouth. Those British statesmen of the
old school, I have said, were genuinely religious. They understood as a
reality the concept of the Return. It appealed to their tradition and
their faith. Some of them were completely baffled by the opposition to
our plan on the part of assimilated Jews; others were actually rubbed
the wrong way by it. Lord Milner was a great friend of Claude Monte-
fiore, the spiritual leader of the anti-Zionists ; but on this point he would
not be influenced. Milner understood profoundly that the Jews alone
were capable of rebuilding Palestine, and of giving it a place in the

TOWARD THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 179

modern family of nations. He said, publicly: ''If the Arabs think that
Palestine will become an Arab country, they are very much mistaken/"
Wickham Steed, the editor of the Times ^ expressed intense annoyance
to me at the action of the anti-Zionists — ^we shall come to the incident
later — in publishing a series of letters against the plan in his paper.
Philip Kerr, afterward Lord Lothian, an enlightened imperialist, saw
in a Jewish Palestine a bridge between Africa, Asia and Europe on the
road to India. He, like many others, was taken aback by the anti-
Zionism of the "leading’’ British Jews ; but the measure of understand-
ing which I expected from him — ^he was then secretary to Lloyd George
— and from others may be gauged by the frankness of the following
letter, which I wrote to him at the height of the Jewish anti-Zionist
opposition, in 1917:

"There is another aspect of the question which troubles me. It seems
as if the cabinet and even yourself attach undue importance to the
opinions held by so-called 'British Jewry.’ If it is a question of the Jews
who have settled in Great Britain, well, the majority of these Jews are
in favor of Zionism. If on the other hand by British Jews one under-
stands the minority of wealthy, half-assimilated Jews who have been
living in this country for the last three or four generations, then, of
course, it is true that these people are dead against Zionism. But here is
the tragic misunderstanding. Zionism is not meant for those people who
have cut themselves adrift from Jewry, it is meant for those masses who
have a will to live a life of their own and those masses have a right to
claim the recognition of Palestine as a Jewish National Home. The sec-
ond category of British Jews will fall into line quickly enough when this
declaration is given to us. I still expect a time, and I do so not without
apprehension, when they will even claim to be Zionists themselves.
Some Jews and non- Jews do not seem to realize one fundamental -fact,
that whatever happens we will get to Palestine. ... No amount of talk
by Mr. Montagu or people like him will stem the tide.”

There were, at that time, alike in the highest Government posts, and
in those of secondary importance, men with a real understanding both
of the moral implication of the Zionist movement, and of the potential-
ities of Palestine. To some extent before my moving to London, but
much more afterward, I set myself to discovering these men, guided
almost always by the indefatigable Mr. Scott. Some of them I met in
the course of my work at the Admiralty and with the Ministry of
Munitions. In the one department of the war where they really dealt
with political problems — ^the War Office — ^there were men of first-rate
political capacity and of deep appreciation of the Zionist movement, even
if they did not always agree with all of its phases. There was a general
atmosphere of sympathy, all the way from General Wilson, the Chief
of Staff, who was a great friend of Lloyd George, to the lower ranks of

i8o TRIAL AND ERROR

the department, which were responsible for the detailed work. In the
Foreign Office, too, there was a predisposition to look favorably on the
Zionist problem. The tone of public opinion at large, as far as we could
ascertain it, was one of interest, and not unfriendly. The Manchester
Guardian was with us ; the London Times was favorably inclined. There
was an eager desire to win over the Jewish public opinion of the world.
In this respect, too, there is a fundamental difference between then and
now; Hitler taught the world not to attach too much importance to
public opinion in general and to Jewish public opinion in particular.

In another sense, too, it was easier to work then than now because
most of the discussions were in the realm of the abstract. The great
difficulties, like the Arab problem, had not yet come to the fore. There
were only doubts of the usual kind, such as one hears even now: Are
the Jews capable of building up a country? Isn’t Palestine too small?”—
although at that time the eastern boundary of Palestine went as far as
the Hedjaz Railway and included Trans-Jordan— Will the Jews go to
Palestine? Is not Zionism the dream of a few intellectuals and of a
handful of poor Jews living in the ghettos of Poland and Russia?” But
these doubts were without great weight. What mattered was the readi-
ness of people to listen and be convinced; and I pleaded the cause of
Palestine wherever I could obtain a hearing.

My Zionist work thrust itself insistently into my labors at the Ad-
miralty. As the pressure of the first stages in the training of chemists
and the creation of plants relaxed, I found myself caught up again in
the maze of personal relations. There is not room enough in this record
for more than a passing allusion to most of the thoroughly interesting,
sometimes rather extraordinary personalities, which played a part in
that phase of Zionist history. Some of them, however, it is impossible
to dismiss offhand.

Very soon after the beginning of my association with the Admiralty
I made the acquaintance of Colonel Richard Meinertzhagen, a member
of an important Danish family which had long been settled in England,
and which had given the country a large number of able men. Meinertz-
hagen, a nephew of Mrs. Sidney Webb (later Lady Passheld) had had
a magnificent career. He was a man of lion-hearted courage, and had
fought on almost every front. He was repeatedly wounded and sent
home; I met him during one of these leaves, in the office of DMI
(Director of Military Intelligence). At our first meeting, he told me the
following story of himself: he had been an anti-Semite, though all he
had known about Jews had been what he picked up in a few casual,
anti-Semitic books. But he had also met some of the rich Jews, who had
not been particularly attractive. But then, in the Near East, he had
come across Aaron Aaronson, a Palestinian Jew, also a man of great
courage and of superior intelligence, devoted to Palestine. Aaronson

TOWARD THE BALFOUR DECLARATION i8i

was a botanist, and the discoverer of wild wheat. With Aaronson,
Meinertzhagen had many talks about Palestine, and was so impressed
by him that he completely changed his mind and became an ardent
Zionist — ^which he has remained till this day. And that not merely in
words. Whenever he can perform a service for the Jews or Palestine
he will go out of his way to do so.

The men with whom I had the most to do, apart from Meinertzhagen,
were Colonel Gribbon and Professor Webster, both of whom were under
the orders of General Macdonogh, Chief of Intelligence. They were
both exceptionally gifted. Webster had been lent to the War Office by
Liverpool University, where he occupied the chair of history; later he
became professor of international relations at Aberystwyth. He had
traveled much in Japan, India and Asia Minor, and knew the Near
East well. He was a devoted friend of the Zionist movement.

One of our greatest finds was Sir Mark Sykes, Chief Secretary of the
War Cabinet, a very colorful and even romantic figure. He was a devout
Catholic, a great landowner in the Hull District, a breeder of race horses,
and a widely traveled man intimately acquainted with the Middle East.
His family had given many explorers, soldiers and foreign representa-
tives to the country. He was not very consistent or logical in his think-
ing, but he was generous and warmhearted. He had conceived the idea
of the liberation of the Jews, the Arabs and the Armenians, whom he
looked upon as the three downtrodden races par excelle^ice. Sykes was
brought in touch with Zionist affairs and myself through Dr. Moses
Gaster — which was somewhat unusual, for Gaster had a tendency to
keep his ^ffinds’^ to himself, and to play a lone hand. Thus, for instance,
Gaster did not tell me until after I had met Sir Herbert Samuel that
the latter, though not a member of the Zionist Organization, had long
been interested in the idea of a Jewish State in Palestine ! And when I
went to meet Samuel — ^this was in November 1914 — Gaster looked at
me with a mixture of roguishness and distrust, and said : “Ho-ho ! So
you are going to negotiate with Herbert Samuel I never understood
the meaning of this queer streak in him.

Still odder, in this general connection, was the fact that Gaster was so
furiously anti-Russian that he seemed to be pro-German ; at any rate he
felt that all our negotiations with British statesmen and officials were
pointless, and that they would only upset the Germans and the
Turks, who were going to win the war. It was Gaster who had first won
Sykes over to Zionism, yet on the occasion of a crucial conference with
Sykes and others, held in GastePs house, Gaster began to air his views
on England's dark prospect in war. The situation was painful, to
say the least, and it speaks well for the tolerance and large-mindedness
of Sykes that he did not fling him from the room. “We shall never, never
win the war!" exclaimed Gaster. Harry Sacher, who was present, and

iSs:

TRIAL AND ERROR

who felt, like the rest of us, that Caster had never pulled his weight in
the movement, interrupted him curtly and said: ''Now, now, Dr. Caster,
the spadework will be done by Dr. Weizmann and Mr. Sokolow.’^

Caster’s views on the Cermans and the outcome of the war under-
went an abrupt change one day when an air raid took place and a num-
ber of bombs dropped in front of his house. I happened to call on him,
and when I asked him how he felt about the air raid, he said, furiously :
"I’m through with them!” — ^meaning the Cermans.

I cannot say enough regarding the services rendered us by Sykes. It
was he who guided our work into more official channels. He belonged to
the secretariat of the War Cabinet, which contained, among others,
Leopold Amery, Ormsby-Core and Ronald Storrs. If it had not been
for the counsel of men like Sykes and Lord Robert Cecil we, with our
inexperience in delicate diplomatic negotiations, would undoubtedly have
committed many dangerous blunders. The need for such counsel will
become evident when I come to tell of the complications which already,
at that time, surrounded the status of the Near East.

Sir Ronald Craham, who was a senior official in the Foreign Office,
also took a great interest in our work. He was desirous of seeing some-
thing done for the Jewish people, but he was more sedate and less
imaginative than Sykes, and lacked his warm and urgent temperament.
I do not know how deep his sympathies were, but he was of consider-
able help in bringing about the Balfour Declaration. I rather think that
to him it was more a propaganda matter than an attempt to solve a diffi-
cult problem.

Of larger stature and superior abilities was Leopold Amery, later
Colonial Secretary. Amery got his enlightened imperialist principles from
Milner. He was the most openminded of all that group. He realized the
importance of a Jewish Palestine in the British imperial scheme of things
more than anyone else. He also had much insight into the intrinsic fine-
ness of the Zionist movement. He gave us unstinted encouragement and
support. He, in particular, was incensed when the leading Jews attacked
the scheme openly in 1917.

It was gradually borne in on me, even before I had settled in London
— ^that is, before this network of relationships had been created in full —
that a decisive period was approaching. Early in the spring of 1916 I
called together the Manchester Zionists in a little room on Cheetham Hill
and put the situation before them. I told them of my talks with Edmond
de Rothschild, with Achad Ha-am, with Herbert Samuel and, above all,
with the British statesmen. With the support of the Manchester Zionists
I went to London, and there talked with Joseph Cowen, the chairman of
the English Zionist Federation. We decided, as a first step, to publish a
little book on Zionism. For, apart from a few pamphlets, mostly out of

TOWARD THE BALFOUR DECLARATION 183

date, and some reports of the Congresses, there was nothing that could
be put into the hands of British statesmen.

The obstacle to the first step was — ^money. We had not a penny in our
treasury. I had to go to Paris and ask Baron Edmond for the money.
He favored the idea and gave me two hundred and fifty pounds, which
I turned over to Leon Simon, who undertook the production and pub-
lication of the book. It appeared under the title of Zionism and the
Jewish Future. A number of men collaborated, and I wrote the foreword.

It was a small book, but it was up to date and it contained some sober
and factual information on Palestine. Much to our astonishment, it was
soon out of print, and a second printing had to be put out. Nor was it
bought, by any means, only by Jews. There was a considerable general
interest in the subject. In part the success of the book was due to the
review, by Lord Cromer, which appeared in the Spectator. Lord Cromer
said, among other things : “The British public will have much more to do
with this subject than is apparent now. . . . Before long politicians will
be unable to brush it aside as the fantastic dream of a few idealists. . . F

The time taken by these demarches and by the volume of my cor-
respondence crowded closely on my exacting official and professional
duties. I had no office and no secretary. We were continuously receiving
people in our little house. My wife answered all the telephone calls,
helped me to the limit of her strength with my visitors and my cor-
respondence, and did what she could, and more, to lighten my burden.
But the situation, becoming increasingly difficult and complicated, was
beyond her strength. The office of the English Zionist Federation was
useless for our purpose. It was out in Fulbome Street in the East End-
After much consideration and heart-searching we decided to open an
office at 175 Piccadilly, and Simon Marks, who was released from military
service for this purpose, took charge of it. From that time on our work
assumed more organized and systematic form. The little office in Picca-
dilly became an important center toward which gravitated ever3d:hing in
Zionist life. A great many people from neutral countries passed through
London. A small group crystallized which gradually constituted itself a
political committee. To it came those members of the Zionist Executive
who passed through London. We had with us Achad Ha-am, Harry
Sacher (who was now living in London), Israel Sieff, some Palestinians
like Aaron Aaronson, Tolkowsky and Dr. Oettinger, who were extremely
valuable because of their knowledge of Palestine and of its economic and
agricultural possibilities and problems. Although the committee was
entirely unofficial — ^the only member of the Zionist Executive on it was
Mr. Sokolow — ^it was a closely knitted group, animated by one purpose,
and harmonious in its working methods. It was sufficiently representa-
tive to give us the feeling that we were speaking for the movement as a
whole, but it was not cumbersome, and the discussions were fruitful.

i 84 trial and error

From time to time we had the benefit of the advice of Herbert Samuel,
of James de Rothschild, and of other members of the House of Com-
mons, Later we had the help of Sir Alfred Mond.

Sokolow appeared in London some time in 1916. He took up his quar-
ters in the Regent Palace Hotel, and kept his office in his suitcase. He
was particularly useful because of his connections with the clerical world.
He interviewed a number of Anglican bishops, among them, I believe,
the Archbishop of Canterbury. He liked this sort of work, being himself
more or less of the archiepiscopal type. Later he conducted negotiations
with the French and Italian authorities and with the Vatican. He, too,
had feared, at the beginning of the war, that Germany would be victori-
ous ; but he changed his views later, and like myself began to see an era
of liberation and hope in the prospect of an Allied victory.

Our first official political committee was formed in January 1916, and
at the beginning contained, besides Sokolow and myself, Joseph Cowen,
Dr. Gaster and Herbert Bentwich, as the representatives of the English
Zionist Federation. The committee worked in close consultation with the
Rothschilds, Herbert Samuel and Achad Ha-am.

Sokolow took a leading hand in the preparation of the first memoran-
dum which we presented to Sir Mark Sykes.

In 1916, Herbert Sidebotham, then of the Manchester Guardian^
helped us to found the British Palestine Committee, which played an
important role in the molding of public opinion in our favor. A small
weekly, edited by Sidebotham, was put out; it contained serious, in-
formative articles aimed at the more thoughtful type of reader, and was
often quoted in the general press. It also carried on propaganda in the
larger cities somewhat on the model of the Phil-Hellenic Societies. Mr.
Sidebothant was one of the first prominent English publicists to per-
ceive the coincidence of the interest between Great Britain and a Jewish
Palestine. Through the Palestine Committee, consisting largely of non-
Jews, and the Palestine Weekly, he constantly urged this view upon the
British public, and in 1918, after the issuance of the Balfour Declaration,
published his book, England and Palestine, conceived in the same spirit.

Thus the work went on steadily throughout the period from 1914 to
1917. In the provinces the Zionists co-operated, drawing the attention
of their MP's to our cause. The young people, too, were of assistance.
The stage was being set for the final struggle.

CHAPTER l6

From Theory to Reality

Zionism Becomes an International Factor — The Amateur State-
Builders — First Memorandum to the British Government —
The Two Fundamental Principles — The International Tangle
— The Secret ''Sykes-Picof Treaty — French and Italian Am-
bitions — A Condominium for Palestine? — Difficulties with
France — Lord Robert Cecil — Mobilizing World Jewish
Opinion — Justice Louis D, Brandeis,

Zionism was rapidly passing from the preliminary stage of propa-
ganda and theoretical discussion to that of practical realities. Our con-
tacts had become firm enough, public opinion was sufficiently developed
for the transition. We had traveled a long way from the tentative “feel-
ers/* the scattered individual sympathies, of 1914. The picture of the
forces for and against us had clarified. We knew who was with us and
who against us in the Jewish world. We had discovered, in the English
political world, a heavy preponderance of opinion in our favor. As early
as March 1916, the subject w'as being mooted in the European chan-
celleries. Sir Edward Buchanan, the British Ambassador to Russia, was
instructed by Sir Edward Grey to sound out the Russian Government on
“the question of Jewish colonization in Palestine.** The French Govern-
ment, or, more exactly, the Foreign Minister, M. Pichon, sent Professor
Victor Guillaume Basch to America to assure American Jewry that in
the disposition of Turkey’s Asiatic territories after the war, the interests
of the Jewish colonies in Palestine would be protected by the French
and British. Perhaps the most interesting evidence of the seriousness
with which the Zionist movement was being taken was the effort of im-
perial Germany to make use of it for her own ends. The German Zionist
leaders were approached with the request to offer their services as inter-
mediaries for peace negotiations. Their reply was that they would make
an effort only if they received from the German Government a written
undertaking to conclude peace on the basis of no annexations and no
indemnities (this was at a time when German arms were successful). I
communicated the move confidentially to Sir Ronald Graham. After some
vague pourparlers the German Government dropped the ofiEer.

185

i86

TRIAL AND ERROR

The time had come, therefore, to take action, to press for a declaration
of policy in regard to Palestine on the part of the British Government ;
and toward the end of January igiy^ I submitted to Sir Mark Sykes
the memorandum prepared by our committee, and had several prelim-
inary conferences with him.

This memorandum, the first we submitted — in unofficial form, it is
true — to the British Government is, I think, of some interest independ-
ently of its place in this narrative. It represents the efforts of a group
of amateur state builders, members of a people which had for many
centuries been separated from this type of activity. None of us had had any
experience in government and colonization. We had no staff of experts
to lean on, no tradition of administration, no civil service, no means
of taxation, no national body of land workers. We were journalists, scien-
tists, lawyers, merchants, philosophers. We were one or two generations
removed — ^if that—from the ghetto. Nevertheless, in retrospect, the
memorandum does seem to have anticipated the shape of things to come.

The document was called: ‘‘Outline of Program for the Jewish Re-
settlement of Palestine in Accordance with the Aspirations of the Zion-
ist Movement.’’ Its first point had to do with national recognition :

The Jewish population of Palestine (which in the programme shall
be taken to mean both present and future Jewish population), shall be
officially recognized by the Suzerain Government as the Jewish
Nation, and shall enjoy in that country full civic, national and political
rights. The Suzerain Government recognizes the desirability and
necessity of a Jewish resettlement of Palestine.

The second point laid down a principle which, on the practical side,
was not less fundamental than the principle of recognition on the
theoretical side. A repudiation of this principle — and it has been repudi-
ated — is a denial of the whole plan.

The Suzerain Government shall grant to the Jews of other countries
full and free right of immigration into Palestine. The Suzerain Gov-
ernment shall give to the Jewish population of Palestine every facility
for immediate naturalization and for land purchase.

The history of our efforts to build Palestine since the Balfour Declara-
tion is in part a history of the struggle to obtain the application of the
foregoing principles.

The third point dealt with instrumentalities.

The Suzerain Government shall sanction a formation of a Jewish
Company for the colonization of Palestine by Jews. The said Com-
pany shall be under the direct protection of the Suzerain Government.
The objects of the Company shall be: a) to support and foster the
existing Jewish settlement in Palestine in every possible way; b) to
aid, support and encourage Jews from other countries who are desir-

FROM THEORY TO REALITY

187

ous of and suitable for settling in Palestine by organizing immigra-
tion, by providing information, and by every other form of material
and moral assistance. The powers of the Company shall be such as
will enable it to develop the country in every way, agricultural, cul-
tural, commercial and industrial, and shall include full powers of land
purchase and development, and especially facilities for the acquisition
of Crown lands, building rights for roads, railways, harbours, power
to establish shipping companies for the transport of goods and pas-
sengers to and from Palestine, and every other power found necessary
for the opening up of the country.

In case the Suzerain Government shall appoint a Governor and a
body of officials to govern Palestine, such appointment shall be made
with due regard to the special requirements of the Jewish population.

The fourth and fifth points were directed toward the development of
local autonomy and the recognition and development of the institutions
already created by us in Palestine.

The contents of the memorandum may be seen under two aspects. One
is the external, bespeaking our expectations and needs vis-a-vis the
Government of ‘Palestine. The other is internal, and bespeaks the duties
and tacit promises of the Jewish people. There have been difficulties,
throughout the years, in regard to both aspects ; and there has been a
constant functional interrelation between the two. If the Government of
Palestine fell short in respect of the external expectation, the Jewish
people, seen as a unit, fell short in respect of the internal. Before and
since the issuance of the Balfour Declaration the recognition of the
nationhood of a Palestinian Jewry met with the obstinate resistance and
denial of the assimilationist Jews. Time and again the Zionist movement
has been ''asked’’ to relinquish both sets of principles ; the principle of
nationality and the principle of free immigration. The first request came
from the assimilationist Jews, the second from various groups in the
Government controlling Palestine. In both instances we have been told
that such a renunciation would be for our own good. In both instances
the argument was nonsense. The national principle was the source of
our internal strength ; the principle of free immigration the only conceiv-
able instrument of expansion. No doubt the discussion will go on until,
with the fulfillment of our aspirations, it becomes irrelevant.

However, there the document was — ^the first draft of our charter, the
first approach to the integration of Zionism with the complex of realities.
And now our discussions took on a new character. We were, so to speak,
in the world arena ; we had taken the plunge into international politics.
We found ourselves in the midst of crosscurrents, of national purposes,
vested interests and contradictory forces within individual countries.
Thus, though France had made some gestures of friendship toward the
Zionist movement, such as the Basch mission to America, she had plans
of her own with regard to the Near East. Italy and the Vatican had

i88

TRIAL AND ERROR

interests, too. Of course, we had never been so naive as to imagine that
nothing more was needed than England's consent. As far back as 1915
I had discussed the question with Mr. C. P. Scott, and a letter of mine
to him, written on February ii of that year, reads in part: ‘'Firstly as
for France, I don't think that she should claim more than Syria, as far
as Beyrouth. The so-called French influence, which is merely spiritual
and religious, is predominant in Syria. In Palestine there is very little of
it — a few monastic establishments. The only work which may be termed
civilizing pioneer work has been carried out by the Jews. From the point
of view of justice, therefore, France cannot lay claim to a country with
which it has no connection whatsoever."

It will be remembered that the sharp intramural Jewish struggle round
the Haifa Technical College had, in fact, been the reflex of contending
claims or ambitions on the part of various Powers with regard to Pales-
tine. This was familiar ground to us. What we did not know in the early
stages of our practical negotiations was that a secret tentative agreement,
which was later revealed as the “Sykes-Picot Treaty," already existed
between France and England ! And the most curious part of the history
is this: Although Sir Mark Sykes, of the British Foreign Offlce, had
himself negotiated this treaty with M. Georges Picot of the French
Foreign Office, Sir Mark entered into negotiations with us, and gave us
his fullest support, without even telling us of the existence of the tenta-
tive agreement! He was, in effect, modifying his stand in our favor,
seeking to revise the agreement so that our claims in Palestine might be
given room. But it was not from him that we learned of the existence of
the agreement, and months passed — ^months during which we carried on
our negotiations with the British and other authorities — ^before we under-
stood what it was that blocked our progress.

The first full-dress conference leading to the Balfour Declaration took
place at the home of Dr. Gaster on the morning of February 17, 1917,
Dr. Gaster presiding. There were present, besides Dr. Gaster, Lord
Rothschild, Herbert Samuel, Sir Mark Sykes, James de Rothschild,
Sokolow, Joseph Cowen, Herbert Bentwich, Harry Sacher and myself.
Sir Mark attended, as he told us, in his private capacity.

The discussions touched on several points which were to constitute
the heart of the problem in the ensuing months. First, we were deter-
mined that there was to be no condominium or internationalization in
Palestine, with all the complications, rivalries, inefficiencies, compromises
and intrigues which that would entail, to the detriment or perhaps
complete paralysis of our work. What the Zionists wanted was a British
protectorate with full rights according to the terms of the memorandum.
These arguments did not, however, apply to the Holy Places, which
we wanted internationalized. Second, the term ''nation," as applied to
the emergent Jev/ish homeland in Palestine, referred to the Jewish home-

FROM THEORY TO REALITY 189

land alone, and in no wise to the relationship* of Jews with the lands in
which they lived. So much was made clear by Herbert Samuel. To this
I added that the Jews who went to Palestine would go to constitute a
Jewish nation, not to become Arabs or Druses or Englishmen.

We reviewed the international situation. It was the consensus that
the Jews everywhere, in so far as they were interested in a Jewish
homeland in Palestine, held the views we were putting forward. Of one
country we could speak with official authority. Mr. Brandeis, the head
of the Zionist movement in America, and adviser to President Wilson
on the Jewish question, was in favor of a British protectorate, and
utterly opposed to a condominium. This was true, also, of the Russian
Zionists. We anticipated no objection on this score from any Zionist
group, not even the German. Not so simple, however, was the external
international situation, that is to say, the attitude of the other Powers.
On this subject Sir Mark Sykes talked at some length. He spoke with
the utmost freedom of the difficulties which confronted us. I may say,
in fact, that he placed all his diplomatic skill at our disposal, and that
without it we should have had much heavier going than we did. There
is, of course, no doubt in my mind that, on the Sykes-Picot agreement,
he was, like Georges Picot, bound to secrecy by his Government.

Sir Mark began by revealing that he had long considered the question
of Palestine and the Jews, and that the idea of a Jewish Palestine
had his full sympathy; moreover, he understood entirely what was
meant by “nationality,’' and there was no confusion in his mind on that
point. His chief concern, at the moment, was the attitude of the Powers.
Sir Mark had been in Russia, had talked with the Foreign Minister,
Sazonov, and anticipated little difficulty from that quarter. Italy, he
said, went on the principle of asking for whatever the French demanded.
And France was the real difficulty. He could not understand French
policy. The French wanted all Syria and a great say in Palestine. We
(the Zionists) would have to discuss the question very frankly with
the French — and at this point we interrupted to say that “we” did not
at all relish having to conduct such negotiations : that was the business
of the British Government. Mr. James de Rothschild pointed out very
correctly that if British Jews approached the French Government, the
latter would get French Rabbis to press for a French Palestine.

Sir Mark then went on to speak of the Arab problem, and of the
rising Arab nationalist movement. Within a generation, he said, the
movement would come into its own, for the Arabs had intelligence,
vitality and linguistic unity. But he believed that the Arabs would come
to terms with us — particularly if they received Jewish support in other
matters. Sir Mark anticipated the attitude of the greatest of the Arabs,
the Emir Feisal.

This, in brief, was the substance of our first “official” conference.

TRIAL AND ERROR

190

Upon it followed a lively activity. Sokolow was entrusted with the
task of modifying the attitude of the French, and of winning the consent
of Italy and the Vatican — a task which he discharged with great skill.
Georges Picot, the French official who had negotiated the secret agree-
ment with Sir Mark, was not particularly helpful His first suggestion
was that the Jews of Eastern Europe should be content with equal rights
on the spot, and should use them for the purpose of settling on the land ;
his second was that if a Jewish State was to be created in Palestine,
the French should have the protectorate. His first point, which had no
foundation in knowledge, ignored the very essence of the Jewish problem,
and the raison d'etre of the Zionist movement. The second did not suit
our book, because we were convinced that as colonizers and colonial
administrators the British were superior to the French; but this was not
something one could exactly state. There were three-cornered conversa-
tions between Sokolow, Picot and Sykes, between Picot, Sykes and
myself — and at no time was the secret agreement mentioned! When
the ground had thus been explored in England, Sokolow left for Paris
and Rome, where he continued his work, always, like myself, blind-
folded, knowing nothing of the Sykes-Picot agreement. In Italy his
task was extremely delicate because of the

Although the Vatican had never formulated any claims in Palestine,
it had a recognized interest in the Holy Places, But then practically all
of Palestine could be regarded as a Holy Place. There was Galilee,
because of the roads on which Christ had walked; there was the
Jordan Valley, because of the river in which Christ had been baptized.
There were Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Nazareth, On such principles,
very little of Palestine was left.

From now on our preoccupation was not with obtaining recognition
for the Zionist ideal, but with the fitting of its application into the web
of realities, and with preventing its frustration by unwise combinations
and concessions. The chief danger came always from the French. I had
a long talk with Balfour on March 22, 1917 — ^he had become Foreign
Minister, replacing Sir Edward Grey — ^and the situation then looked
so serious that Balfour made a rather startling suggestion ; if no agree-
ment could be reached between England and France, we should try to
interest America, and work for an Anglo-American protectorate over
Palestine. It was an attractive, if somewhat farfetched idea, but, as I
wrote to C. P. Scott, “it is fraught with the danger that there always
is with two masters, and we do not know yet how far the Americans
would agree with the British on general principles of administration."'

It was again the attitude of the French which came to the fore in
my talk with Herbert H. Asquith, the Prime Minister, on April 3. In
spite of what we have seen, from private notes published years later,
of Asquith’s personal unfriendliness to the Zionist ideal, his official

FROM THEORY TO REALITY 191

attitude was helpful. Neither he nor Mr. Balfour, however, mentioned
the Sykes-Picot treaty. I learned of its existence on April 16, 1917 from
Mr. Scott who had obtained the information from Paris. The arrange-
ment was : that France was to obtain, after the war, not only northern
Syria, but Palestine down to a line from St. Jean d'Acre (Acco) to Lake
Tiberias, including the Hauran; the rest of Palestine was to be inter-
nationalized.

This was startling information indeed ! It seemed to me that the pro-
posal was devoid of rhyme or reason. It was unjust to England, fatal
to us, and not helpful to the Arabs. I could easily understand why
Sykes had not been averse to the abrogation of the treaty and why
Picot had not been able to defend it with any particular energy.

On April 25 I went into the matter thoroughly with Lord Robert
Cecil, the Assistant Secretary for Foreign Affairs, one of the great
spirits of modern England, and a prime factor in the creation of the
League of Nations. Like Balfour, Milner, Smuts and others, Lord
Cecil was deeply interested in the Zionist ideal; I think that he alone
saw it in its true perspective as an integral part of world stabilization.
To him the re-establishment of a Jewish Homeland in Palestine and
the organization of the world in a great federation were complementary
features of the next step in the management of human affairs.

We did not talk openly of the Sykes-Picot treaty. I alluded only to
‘^an arrangement which is supposed to exist,” and which dated from
the early days of the war. According to its terms Palestine would be
cut arbitrarily into two halves — a ''Solomon’s judgment,” I called it —
and the Jewish colonizing effort of some thirty years wiped out. To
make matters worse, the lower part of Palestine, Judea, would not
even pass under a single administration, but would become inter-
nationalized : which in effect meant — ^as I had recently written to Philip
Kerr — an Anglo-French condominium. What we wanted, I said to
Lord Cecil, was a British protectorate. Jews all over the world trusted
England. They knew that law and order would be established by British
rule, and that under it Jewish colonizing activities and cultural develop-
ment would not be interfered with. We could thus look forward to a
time when we would be strong enough to claim a measure of self-gov-
ernment. Lord Cecil then asked what were the objections against a
purely French control. I answered that of course a purely French con-
trol was preferable to dual control, or internationalization, but the
French in their colonizing activity had not followed the same lines as
the English. They had always interfered with the population and tried
to impose on it the esprit jrangais. Moreover, I did not think the French
administration as efficient as the British, and I ventured the opinion
that the Zionist Organization had— ^ven then— done more constructive
work in Palestine than the French in Tunis.

TRIAL AND ERROR

192

Lord Cecil then raised the subject of my going out to Palestine and
Syria. I answered that I was prepared to make the trip — ^if my work at
the Admiralty would permit it — ^but only with the understanding that
I was to work for a Jewish Palestine under a British protectorate.
Lord Cecil agreed to this view. He saw the difficulties of the situation,
but suggested that it would help a great deal if the Jews of the world
would express themselves in favor of a British protectorate; to which
I answered that the task of mobilizing this opinion was exactly what
I was prepared to undertake; and it would be in pursuance of such a
task that I would go to Palestine. (My trip to Palestine did not come
off until after the Balfour Declaration.)

There are two points in this interview which have been raised before
in these memoirs, but which I feel I ought to stress again. The first is
the value which was placed on Jewish public opinion. The second is the
relationship which would exist betw^-een the British protectorate in
Palestine and the creation of the Jewish Homeland. It was the Jews
who gave substance and reality to the idea of a British protectorate —
which afterward took the form of a mandate — over Palestine. It was our
movement, the labor, the capital and the sacrifice we put into it, which
made the proposal attractive and, in fact, meaningful. The progress
which Palestine has made in these years is due to our efforts, as one
commission after another has testified; and I believe that certain con-
sequences flow from all these facts.

We had long pointed out to the British, and I repeated it again in my
interview with Lord Cecil, that a Jewish Palestine would be a safeguard
to England, in particular in respect to the Suez Canal. Our foresight
had larger bearings than we ourselves understood. It is proper to ask,
after this interval of a quarter of a century, with the Second World War
fresh in our memories, what the position would have been in the Near
East, not for England alone, but for the world democratic cause, if we
had not provided in Palestine a foothold for England ; if, instead of the
bulwark thus constructed, Palestine would have been as open as Syria
and Iraq to a Nazi drive after the fall of France. It is, I think, per-
missible to say that there was something providential in our insistence
on the arrangement which we put through, and the exertions by which
we gave it effect.

Nor can it be objected that all this is merely the wisdom of hindsight.
We were always seeing decades ahead. When I found Sykes somewhat
hesitant about our plans, I wrote to Scott — this was March 20, 1917:

cannot help feeling that he considers the Zionist scheme as an ap-
pendage to the bigger scheme with which he is dealing, the Arab scheme.
Of course, I understand that the Arab position is, at present, much
more important from the point of view of the immediate prosecution of
the war than the Jewish question, which requires a rather long view to

FROM THEORY TO REALITY

193

appreciate its meaning ; but it makes our work very difficult if, in all the
present negotiations with the Arabs, the Jewish interests in Palestine
are not well defined.”

I believe it is also proper to ask what would have been left today of
Arab rights not only in Palestine, but in Syria, Iraq and even in Saudi
Arabia, if Zionist foresight had not created the British foothold in the
Near East, and strengthened it with a vigorous Jewish settlement whose
loyalty to the democratic cause was not merely verbal, but expressed
itself in action.

In the mobilization of Jewish public opinion, undertaken, as wc have
just seen, at the instance of the British Government, we had in mind
England, South Africa, Russia, France, Italy, Canada and America —
but by far the greatest emphasis was placed on America. Of America’s
role in the movement I shall have much to say. At this point, one aspect
of her immense services is relevant. Mr. Louis D. Brandeis was at the
head of the movement then, and I was in constant touch with him. On
April 8, 1917, I sent him a report on the general position, which I could
say was developing very satisfactorily. ‘^The main difficulty,” I wrote,
‘'seems to be the claims of the French. . . . We look forward here to a
strengthening of our position, both by the American Government and
American Jews, and on that point I had a conversation with Mr. Nor-
man Hapgood in the presence of Mr. Herbert Samuel, Mr. Neil Prim-
rose, Mr. James de Rothschild and Commander Wedgwood, M.P. An
expression of opinion coming from yourself and perhaps from other
gentlemen connected with the Government in favor of a Jewish Pales-
tine under a British protectorate would greatly strengthen our hands.”

Before long, Mr. Brandeis was able to throw the full weight of his
remarkable personality onto the scales. America had entered the war
in March of that year. On April 20, Mr. Balfour arrived in America on
a special mission, and almost immediately met the Justice at a party at
the White House. Mrs. Dugdale, Balfour’s biographer, reports that
Balfour’s opening remark to Brandeis was : “You are one of the Amer-
icans I had wanted to meet,” and continues : “Balfour remarked to Lord
Eustace Percy, a member of his Mission, that Brandeis was in some
ways the most remarkable man he had met in the United States. It
seems from such notes of these conversations as survive, that Balfour
pledged his own personal support to Zionism. He had done it before to
Dr. Weizmann, but now he was British Foreign Secretary. Mr. Justice
Brandeis seems to have become increasingly emphatic, during the course
of the British Mission’s visit, about the desire of American Zionists to
see a British Administration in Palestine.”

My letter of April 8 must have reached Mr. Brandeis about the time
of B^four’s arrival on the twentieth. I wrote again, on April 23 : “Both
Russia and America are at present proclaiming antiannexationist prin-

194

TRIAL AND ERROR

ciples. ... I need not dwell on the fact that Jewish National Democracy
and the Zionist Organization which essentially represents this Democracy
trust implicitly to British rule, and they see in a British protectorate the
only possibility for a normal development of a Jewish commonwealth in
Palestine. Whereas, in my opinion. Great Britain would not agree to a
simple annexation of Palestine, and it does not desire any territorial
expansion, it would certainly support and protect a Jewish Palestine.
This is why American support for this scheme is so valuable at the
present stage.”

Mr. Brandeis did more than press the idea of a Jewish Palestine
under a British protectorate. He carried on a general work of clarifica-
tion, In America as in England, then as later, Jewish opposition to Zion-
ism was confined to minority groups. Mrs. Dugdale records further:
^^As late as January, 1918, our Ambassador in Washington reported, on
the authority of Mr. Justice Brandeis himself, that the Zionists were
violently opposed by the great capitalists, for different reasons,” and she
adds, in passing: “this in itself shows how baseless was the idea, once
very prevalent, that the Balfour Declaration was in part a bargain with
American financiers.”

But the most important feature of American help at that time issued
from the policy proclaimed by President Wilson in repudiation of secret
treaties. The Sykes-Picot arrangement was not a full treaty; but it was
sufficiently official to create the greatest single obstacle to our progress.
The proclamation of the Wilsonian principle of open covenants openly
arrived at compelled the Powers to put their cards on the table. The
Sykes-Picot arrangement, or semiofficial treaty, faded into the back-
ground.

From all the foregoing it will be seen that our work was carried on
harmoniously and systematically. As Mrs. Dugdale puts it, succinctly:

Jewish national diplomacy was in being.” She adds: “By the end
of April [1917] the Foreign Office recognized, with some slight dismay,
that the British Government was virtually committed.”

The final struggle round the issuance of the Balfour Declaration was,
however, still before us; and it was preceded by an “incident” which
is, I think, worth recording for other reasons than historic importance.

CHAPTER 17

Opera BoufFe Intermezzo

Mysterious Cable from Mr. Brandeis — Intrigues around
Turkey — Ex-Ambassador Henry Morgenthau — Secret Mission
to Gibraltar — Meeting with Professor Felix Frankfurter —
Vagueness and Confusion.

One morning early in June of that year (1917) I received a cable
from Mr. Brandeis to the effect that an American commission was
traveling to the East and that I should try to make contact with it
somewhere. Who the members of the commission were, what its purpose
was, to what point of the East it was traveling, and where I could
establish contact, were details not mentioned. That it had something to
do with us was obvious ; I would not have received the cable otherwise.
Everything else was a complete mystery. I immediately consulted Sykes
and Ormsby-Gore. From them I learned that attempts were being made
to detach Turkey from the Central Powers. America was taking the
lead in the move, with the cognizance of the other Powers. Ex- Ambas-
sador Henry Morgenthau would be leaving New York shortly for
Switzerland, to be met there by French and English groups.

The Foreign Office did not attach much importance to the maneuver.
I did — at first. There was, I thought, the possibility that the negotiations
might be conducted on the basis of an integral Turkey, leaving the Jews,
the Arabs and the Armenians in the lurch. I put this question point
blank to the Foreign Office ; they replied that it was axiomatic that no
arrangements with Turkey could be arrived at unless Armenia, Syria
and Arabia were detached from Turkish rule.

I was not satisfied. A fortnight later I learned that Mr. Morgenthau
was to be accompanied on his mission by "‘some Zionists !” Nor was I
assured by tlie names suggested as the English envoys. They did not
seem to m^ to be the proper persons for such a mission. It seemed to me
that the only man by whom the British Government could be ade-
quately represented, who thoroughly understood the Near East, and
enjoyed the full confidence of the representatives of the Arabs, Jews
and Armenians, was Sir Mark Sykes, the man who had had this
particular question in his hands for the last three years. I knew that there

195

196

TRIAL AND ERROR

were influetices in the Foreign Office working against Sir Mark precisely
because of the views he held and because, as I wrote to the ever~helpful
Mr. Scott, “he is much more broadminded than some bureaucrats.’’

A few days later I was asked to call on Balfour. He took up the
subject of the commission, but seemed to be almost as much in the dark
as myself with regard to its exact purposes and plans. However, Mr.
Morgenthau had obviously obtained President Wilson’s blessing for his
scheme, whatever it was, and the French were apparently keen on it.
The British did not like the smell of it, and they wanted Mr. Morgenthau
to be turned back before he reached Egypt. But how was this to be done
without making a bad impression on President Wilson? I looked rather
blank, suspecting that Mr. Balfour already had some plan in mind, but
quite unable to guess at it. Then, to my complete astonishment, he
suggested that, without giving the affair an official character, I was
to be sent to Gibraltar as the British representative. I was to talk to
Mr. Morgenthau, and keep on talking till I had talked him out of this
mission.

By this time it was becoming clear to me that the whole matter was
not by any means as serious as I had feared. I accepted Mr. Balfour’s
offer, obtained a leave of absence from the Admiralty, and set out to
catch Mr. Morgenthau.

The Foreign Office armed me with a formidable set of credentials and
attached to me, as intelligence officer, Kennerley Rumford, a great singer
— was the husband of the cantatrice Clara Butt — and a delightful
companion, though somewhat unsuited for a secret mission. We traveled
through France to Spain, and at Irun were met by a lady intelligence
officer and conducted to San Sebastian. The lady was very smart, and
exceedingly well dressed; she arrived in a big luxury car. From that
point on we moved, as it were, with a cortege of German spies. Rumford,
though in mufti, looked every inch a British officer ; and his methods of
preserving secrecy were not exactly subtle. At San Sebastian we took
two sleeping compartments for Madrid, and bought up the adjacent
compartments on either side. An instant before we started a man
boarded the train and claimed loudly and insistently that he had a prior
reservation on one of the adjacent compartments. Rumford, losing his
patience in the ensuing argument, finally drew a revolver and brandished
it in the face of the intruder who, probably unaccustomed to such public
demonstrations on the part of a secret-service agent, hastily withdrew.
In Madrid our baggage was rifled, a procedure which we expected and in
fact facilitated by leaving our bags unlocked. We seemed to have got rid
of our pursuers when we left Madrid by car, taking the train at Seville
for Algeciras.

I had two queer encounters in Madrid. Before leaving England I had
asked whether I might visit Max Nordau, who, being an Austrian, had

OPERA BOUFFE INTERMEZZO

197

been expelled from France as an enemy alien, and was in Madrid. I knew
Nordau to be stanclily pro- Ally, and I was anxious to see him. The
Foreign Office said : “We have nothing against your visiting Dr. Nordau,
but you had better consult Hardynge, the British Ambassador in
IMadrid.'' I anticipated all sorts of difficulties. Immediately on my arrival
I proceeded to the Embassy, to pay my respects and to arrange my visit
to Nordau; but before I could proffer my request I was informed that
I was expected to lunch, and that Dr. Nordau would be there. On leav-
ing the Embassy I ran into the one man I wanted to avoid in Madrid —
Professor Yahudah. Each of us thought he was seeing ghosts. Professor
Yahudah began at once ! “What on earth are you doing here? When did
you come ? Where are you going T' I improvised a number of not very
coherent stories and made an appointment which I did not keep. With
Nordau, however, I had permission to be quite open, and was.

We arrived in Gibraltar on July 3, a day or so before the Americans
were expected in Cadiz, whither an intelligence officer was sent to
escort them to Gibraltar. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Morgen-
thau. Professor Felix Frankfurter — ^then assistant to Secretary of State
Baker — Lewin-Epstein, a veteran Zionist, and an Armenian whose name
now escapes me. The commission brought with it, through the submarine-
infested waters, eighteen trunks and four hundred thousand dollars in
gold. The money had been entrusted to Lewin-Epstein by the Joint
Distribution Committee for relief work in Egypt and the Near East.

Lewin-Epstein I knew; of the brilliant Professor Frankfurter, and of
his services to Zionism, I had heard, and also, of course, of Mr.
Morgenthau, the former Ambassador to Turkey. But the gentleman
who was Mr. Morgenthau’s secretary, guide and adviser, was new to
me, and to him I took an instantaneous, cordial and enduring dislike.
It appeared he had left Turkey only some six weeks before the con-
ference, and was, therefore, Mr. Morgenthau's expert on conditions in
that country.

On the fourth the French representative arrived. He was a Colonel
Weyl, a charming and well-informed man who had been for many years
the head of the Turkish tobacco monopoly, knew the country, and spoke
Turkish. The French, it soon transpired, were taking the American
mission seriously. After all, here was an ex- Ambassador, who had come
across the ocean with the blessings of the President, and accompanied
by a whole suite. Besides, the wish may have been father to the thought :
the French were prepared to consider a separate peace with Turkey,
on the basis of the inviolability of the Turkish Empire. I, for my part,
soon came to the conclusion that the whole business was a canard.

Mr. Morgenthau had had an idea. He felt that Turkey was on the
point of collapse, sick of the war, and sicke£ still of German domination.
It had occurred to him that perhaps Taalat Pasha might be played off

igS TRIAL AND ERROR

against Enver Bey, and a peace move encouraged. I put two simple
questions to Mr. Morgenthau. First, did he think the time had come
for the American Government to open up negotiations of such a nature
with the Turkish authorities; in other words, did he think Turkey
realized sufficiently that she was beaten, or likely to lose the war, and
was, therefore, in a frame of mind to lend herself to negotiations of that
nature? Second, assuming that the time was ripe for such overtures,
did Mr. Morgenthau have any clear ideas about the conditions under
which the Turks would be prepared to detach themselves from their
masters ?

Colonel Weyl was particularly anxious to obtain a precise answer from
Mr. Morgenthau. But Mr. Morgenthau was unable to furnish one. In
fact, as the talks went on, it became embarrassingly apparent that he
had merely had a vague notion that he could utilize his personal
connections in Turkey to some end or other; but on examining the
question more closely, he was compelled to admit that he did not know
the position and was not justified in saying that the time had arrived for
negotiations. Nor had he received any definite instructions from Presi-
dent Wilson. In short, he seemed not to have given the matter sufficiently
serious consideration. I asked Mr. Morgenthau several times why he had
tried to enlist the support of the Zionist Organization. To this question,
too, he had no clear answer. I therefore thought it necessary to state
clearly to Mr. Morgenthau that on no account should the Zionist
Organization be compromised by these negotiations. When I asked
Frankfurter, informally, what he was doing on this odd mission, he
answered that he had come along to keep an eye on things !

It was no job at all to persuade Mr. Morgenthau to drop the project.
He simply persuaded himself, and before long announced his intention
of going to Biarritz instead of Egypt. In Biarritz, he said, he would
communicate with General Pershing, and await further instructions from
President Wilson.

We talked in this vacuum for two whole days. It was midsummer, and
very hot. We had been given one of the casements in the Rock for our
sessions, and the windows were kept open. As Mr. Morgenthau did not
speak French, and Colonel Weyl did not speak English, we had to fall
back on German. And the Tommies on guard marched up and down
outside, no doubt convinced that we were a pack of spies who had been
lured into a trap, to be court-martialed the next morning and shot out
of hand. I must confess that I did not find it easy to make an intelligible
report to Sir Ronald Graham.

We all traveled back through Spain together, on a wonderful train
which was placed at our disposal, and parted company amicably, if
somewhat sheepishly. This was the last of the ‘'commission.'’ I can only
offer a surmise on the origins of it. America had entered the war, and

OPERA BOUFFE INTERMEZZO

199

Morgen thau had been withdrawn from Turkey, He had returned to
find all his friends with big jobs, and himself rather out of things. It
would have been only natural for him to go to Wilson, and to say:
‘Took here, Mr. President: I know the Turks, I know Enver Bey,
Taalat Pasha and the others. If I could only get to see them, I could
persuade Turkey to quit.” I can imagine Mr. Wilson replying: “All
right, go ahead.” No other explanation will fit the picture.

I never saw Mr. Morgenthau again, but I did come across Mrs.
Morgenthau years later at a great garden party which Samuel Unter-
myer gave at Grey stone. Taken off my guard I exclaimed rather
clumsily: “Oh, Mrs. Morgenthau, I haven’t seen you since Gibraltar!”
Mrs. Morgenthau said, coldly : “Yes !” and turned her back on me.

How the story of this mission got out I do not know, and it
hardly matters now. But get out it did. When the Lodge Com-
mittee brought its resolution before the American Congress, in sup-
port of the Jewish Homeland in Palestine, in 1922, and a Senate
committee looked into its merits, someone — I think it was Senator
Reed — objected strongly to its passage. He said that the leaders of the
Zionist movement were unworthy men, and that I in particular had
prolonged the war for two years by scuttling the Morgenthau Mission !

CHAPTER l8

The Balfour Declaration

The Enemy from Within — A Destructive Jewish Minority —
The London Times Sides with Us— First Draft of Proposed
D e deration — Montagu’s Attack in Cabinet Meeting — Brandeis
Helps from America — The Compromise Document — The Bal-
four Declaration Is Issued.

It was an extraordinary struggle that developed within English
Jewry in the half-year which preceded the issuance of the Balfour
Declaration — a struggle which probably had no historic parallel any-
where. Here was a people which had been divorced from its original
homeland for some eighteen centuries, putting in a claim for restitution.
The world was willing to listen, the case was being sympathetically re-
ceived, and one of the great Powers was prepared to lead in the act of
restitution, while the others had indicated their benevolent interest.
And a well-to-do, contented and self-satisfied minority, a tiny minority,
of the people in question rose in rebellion against the proposal, and
exerted itself with the utmost fury to prevent the act of restitution from
being consummated. Itself in no need — or believing itself to be in no
need — of the righting of the ancient historic wrong, this small minority
struggled bitterly to deprive the vast majority of the benefits of a unique
act of the world conscience; and it succeeded, if not in balking the act
of justice, at least in vitiating some of its application.

The assimilationist handful of upper-class British Jews were aware
that the Zionist cause was making great headway in Government circles
and in general public opinion. But it was only in the spring of 1917 that
they felt the critical moment to be approaching, and I knew that action
could be expected. On May 20, a special conference of delegates from
all the constituent Zionist societies of Great Britain was held in London,
I had been the President of the Zionist Federation for about a year, and
in my official address to the assembly I issued a note of warning against
the impending attack. We were already so far advanced on our path to
recognition that I could speak of the dangers which attended success.

I said: "'One reads constantly in the press, and one hears from
friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish, that it is the endeavor of the

200

201

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

Zionist movement immediately to create a Jewish State in Palestine.
Our American friends have gone further, and they have even determined
the forrn of this State, by advocating a Jewish Republic. While heartily
welcoming all these demonstrations as a genuine manifestation of the
Jewish national will, we cannot consider them as safe statesmanship. . . .
States must be built up slowly, gradually, systematically and patiently.
At that time the whole world — and the Jews more than anyone else —
had been thrilled by the overthrow of the czarist regime in Russia, and the
establishment of the liberal Kerensky regime. This, too, was a danger of
a sort. '‘Some of us — some of our friends even, and especially some of
our opponents,’’ I told the conference, "are very quick in drawing
conclusions as to what will happen to the Zionist movement after the
Russian Revolution. Now, they say, the great stimulus of the Zionist
movement has been removed. The Russian Jews are free; they do not
need any places of refuge outside of Russia — somewhere in Palestine.
Nothing can be more superficial, and nothing can be more wrong than
that. The sufferings of Russian Jewry never were the cause of Zionism, i
The fundamental cause of Zionism was, and is, the ineradicable national
striving of Jewry to have a home of its own — ^a national center, a national
home with a national Jewish life. And this remains now stronger than
ever. A strong and free Russian Jewry will appreciate more than ever
the strivings of the Zionist Organization.”

I was speaking the simple truth. The great outburst of enthusiasm
with which the Balfour Declaration was received in Russia, the great
revival of the Zionist movement, before its final extinction by the
Bolshevik regime, was a stirring demonstration of the Jewish national
will to live. But I reserved for the end of my address to the conference
what weighed most heavily on my mind. I said : "It is a matter of deep
humiliation that we cannot stand united in this great hour. But it is not
the fault of the Zionist Organization. It is, perhaps, not the fault of our
opponents. It must be attributed to the conditions of our life in the
Dispersion, which have caused in Jewry a cleavage difficult to bridge
even at a time like this. It is unfortunate that there still exists a small
minority which disputes the very existence of the Jews as a nation. But
there need be no misgivings on that account; for I have no hesitation
in saying that if it comes to a plebiscite and a test, there can be no doubt
on which side the majority of the Jews will be found. And I warn you
that this test is bound to come — ^and come sooner, perhaps, than we
think. ... We do not want to offer to the world a spectacle of a war
of brothers. We are surrounded by too many enemies to be able to
afford this luxury. But we warn those who will force an open breach that
they will find us prepared to stand up united in defense of the cause which
is sacred to us. We shall not allow anybody to interfere with the hard

202

TRIAL AND ERROR

work which we are doing, and we say to all our opponents : ‘Hands off
the Zionist movement V

As I suspected, the attack had been prepared. Four days later, on May
24, the Conjoint Committee — or at least the two principal officers of the
Conjoint Committee, Mr. David L. Alexander, President of the Board
of Deputies of British Jews, and Mr. Claude G. Montefiore, President of
the Anglo-Jewish Association — ^published a long statement in the London
Times, violently repudiating the Zionist position, and urging the
Government against favorable action on our demands. All the old
arguments that I had learned to expect since the time of my encounter
with Western assimilation in the person of Dr. Barness of Pfungstadt
were there. The Jews were a religious community, and nothing more.
The Jews could not claim a National Home. The utmost that could be
demanded for the Jews of Palestine was enjoyment of religious and
civil liberty, “reasonable’’ facilities for immigration and colonization,
and “such municipal privileges in towns and colonies as may be shown
to be necessary,” and so on, and so on.

There were some interesting anomalies in the situation which would
have amused us if the matter had been less serious. Messrs. Alexander
and Montefiore repudiated the Zionist philosophy on the ground that
Judaism was nothing more than religion. The Chief Rabbi of the British
Empire, Dr. Hertz, and the Haham of the Portuguese and Spanish
communities, Dr. Gaster, rebutted the attack! Messrs. Alexander and
Montefiore — and with them, of course, the group to which I have
alluded, Mr. Lucien Wolf, Mr. Edwin Montagu (by then Secretary of
State for India) and others — ^were afraid of having their patriotism
challenged. The London Times, in a rather remarkable leading article,
answered : “Only an imaginative nervousness suggests that the realization
of territorial Zionism, in some form, would cause Christendom to turn
round on the Jews and say, ‘Now you have a land of your own, go to it.’ ”

This leading article was written by Wickham Steed, after various
letters by Dr. Hertz, Dr. Gaster, Lord Rothschild and myself had
appeared in the Times. I went to see Steed in order to hand him my
own letter. He received me with the utmost cordiality. I found him
not only interested in our movement, but quite well informed on it. He
had known Herzl in Vienna; he had known Leopoldstadt and the
Viennese Jews. He was not only glad to publish the Zionist statements
but expressed downright annoyance with the heads of the Conjoint
Committee. For a good hour or so we discussed the kind of leader which
was likely to make the best appeal to the British public, and when it
appeared, on the twentyminth, it caused something like consternation
among the assimilationists. It was a magnificent presentation of the
Zionist case. I cannot refrain from quoting two more sentences, aimed
directly at the arguments of the Conjoint Committee heads. “We believe
it [Zionism] in fact to embody the feelings of the great bulk of Jewry

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

203

everywhere. . . . The importance of the Zionist movement is that it has
fired with a new ideal millions of poverty-stricken Jews cooped up in the
ghettos of the Old World and the New/'

The bringing of the fight into the open had made it imperative that the
Government take action, and thus settle the issue. On June 13, before I
left on my Gibraltar '‘mission," I wrote Sir Ronald Graham : "It appears
desirable from every point of view that the British Government should
give expression to its sympathy and support of the Zionist claims on
Palestine. In fact it need only confirm the view which eminent and
representative members of the Government have many times expressed
to us, and which have formed the basis of our negotiations throughout
the long period of almost three years." And a few days later I went,
together with Sir Ronald and Lord Rothschild, to see Mr. Balfour (this
visit had nothing to do with the Gibraltar mission) and put it to the
Foreign Secretary that the time had come for the British Government
to give us a definite declaration of support and encouragement. Mr.
Balfour promised to do so, and asked me to submit to him a declaration
which would be satisfactory to us, and which he would try and put
before the War Cabinet.

While I was absent in Gibraltar, the Political Committee, under the
chairmanship of Sokolow, busied itself with the preparation of the
draft. A number of formulas were devised ; in all of them we were careful
to stay within the limits of the general attitude on the subject which
prevailed among the leading members of the Government. This is some-
thing to be borne in mind for the reconstruction of the complete picture.
The final formula on which we agreed, and which Lord Rothschild
handed to Mr. Balfour on our behalf on July 18, 1917, ran as follows:

His Majesty's Government, after considering the aims of the Zion-
ist Organization, accept the principle of recognizing Palestine as the
National Home of the Jewish people and the right of the Jewish
people to build up its national life in Palestine under a protection to
be established at the conclusion of peace, following upon the success-
ful issue of the war.

His Majesty’s Government regard as essential for the realization of
this principle the grant of internal autonomy to the Jewish nationality
in Palestine, freedom of immigration for Jews, and the establishment
of a Jewish National Colonizing Corporation for the re-establishment
and economic development of the country.

The conditions and forms of the internal autonomy and a Charter
for the Jewish National Colonizing Corporation should, in the view
of His Majesty's Government, be elaborated in detail and determined
with the representatives of the Zionist Organization.

It is only fair to note that the Jewish opposition to Zionism was
mitigated by opposition within fhe ranks of the non-Zionists themselves.
It transpired that the heads of the Conjoint Committee had acted without

TRIAL AND ERROR

204

the knowledge and consent of the constituent bodies, the Board of Depu-
ties of British Jews and the Anglo-Jewish Association, in issuing the anti-
Zionist statement to the London Twies. A vote of censure of those
bodies actually forced the resignation of Mr. Alexander and a number of
his colleagues. Small as the non-Zionist body of sentiment was, the
active opposition was even smaller. And yet it was capable of working
great harm, and we w^aited with much concern for the response of the
Government,

On August 17, I was able to write to Felix Frankfurter, in the United
States: “The draft has been submitted to the Foreign Office and is
approved by them, and I heard yesterday, it also meets the approval of
the Prime Minister [Lloyd George]

It remained, of course, to be approved by the War Cabinet—but from
the individual expressions of opinion which had come from its members,
there cannot be the slightest doubt that without outside interference —
entirely from Jews ! — the draft would have been accepted early in August,
substantially as we submitted it.

Around September 18, I learned that our declai*ation had been
discussed at a cabinet meeting from which both Mr. Lloyd George and
hlr. Balfour were absent, and that the sharp intervention of Edwin
Montagu had caused the withdrawal of the item from the agenda.
The same day I received a letter from Lord Rothschild, in which he
said: “I have written to Mr. Balfour asking him for an interview
Thursday or Friday. ... Do you remember I said to you in London, as
soon as I saw the announcement in the paper of Montagu's appointment,
that I was afraid we were done."

I did not feel as desperately as Lord Rothschild, but the situation was
unpleasant. We saw Balfour separately, I on the nineteenth. Lord
Rothschild on the twenty-first. I received the utmost encouragement
from Balfour. He told me that his sympathies had not been changed by
the attitude of Montagu. I was able to send the following cable to Bran-
deis on the same day:

Following text declaration has been approved Foreign Office and
Prime Minister and submitted War Cabinet: i. His Majesty's Gov-
ernment accepts the principle that Palestine should be reconstituted
as the National Home of the Jewish people. 2. His Majesty's Govern-
ment will use its best endeavors to secure the achievement of this
object and will discuss the necessary methods with the Zionist Or-
ganization.

I added that the opposition of the assimilationists was to be expected and
that it would be of great assistance if the text of this declaration received
the support of President Wilson and of Brandeis.

To Lord Rothschild, Balfour expressed the same unwavering firmness

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION ^05

on the issue as to me. Lord Rothschild wrote to me, after his interview
with Balfour on September 21 : ‘‘1 said I had evidence that a member of
the cabinet was working against us. He [Balfour] hastily said: 'He is not
a member of the cabinet, only of the Government, and I think his views
are quite mistaken.’ ”

On the twenty-first I had another talk with Smuts — a member of the
War Cabinet, and obtained from him the expected reiteration of his
loyalty. At the same time we were doing our best to counteract the
activities of the assimilationists, who were attacking us in a series of
pamphlets, in the press, and in person-to-person propaganda, as well as in
the cabinet. On the twenty-eighth I talked again with Lloyd George,
who put our memorandum on the agenda of the War Cabinet for
October 4. And on the third I wrote to the Foreign Office, for trans-
mission to the War Cabinet :

"We cannot ignore rumors which seem to foreshadow that the anti-
Zionist view will be urged at the meeting of the War Cabinet by a
prominent Englishman of the Jewish faith who does not belong to the
War Cabinet. We are not in a position to verify these rumors, still less
to criticize the fact should these rumors prove to be true ; but we must
respectfully point out that in submitting our resolution we entrusted our
national and Zionist destiny to the Foreign Office and the imperial War
Cabinet in the hope that the problem would be considered in the light
of imperial interests and the principles for which the Entente stands. We
are reluctant to believe that the War Cabinet would allow the divergence
of views on Zionism existing in Jewry to be presented to them in a
strikingly one-sided manner. . . . Where there is a human mass claiming
recognition as a nation there the case for such recognition is complete.
We have submitted the text of the declaration on behalf of an organization
which claims to represent the national will of a great and ancient though
scattered people. We have submitted it after three years of negotiations
and conversations with prominent representatives of the British nation.”

Whether these sharp expostulations reached the members of the
War Cabinet the next day I do not know. But the meeting of the War
Cabinet to deal with the declaration, was to be held, according to advice
given me, on the fourth. That day I came to the office of Mr. Kerr, Lloyd
George’s secretary, and I had the temerity to say : "Mr. Kerr, suppose
the cabinet decided to ask me some questions before they decide the
matter. Would it not be well for me to stay here and be in readiness?”
To this he replied, kindly, even compassionately: “Since the British
Government has been a Government no private person has been admitted
to one of its sessions. So you go back to your laboratory, Dr. Weizmann,
and everything will be all right.”

206

TRIAL AND ERROR

I did not go back to my laboratory. I could not have done any work.
I went, instead, into the office of Ormsby-Gore, close by, and waited.
There was nothing I could do, of course, but I should have had to be
more — or less — than human, to have occupied myself during those hours
with the routine of my laboratory. I learned too late that I might have
done something.

When the Palestine item was laid before the War Cabinet, Edwin
Montagu made a passionate speech against the proposed move. The
tenor of his arguments will be gathered from the general propaganda of
the anti-Zionists, given on the foregoing pages. There was nothing new
in what he had to say, but the vehemence with which he urged his views,
the implacability of his opposition, astounded the cabinet. I understand
the man almost wept. When he had ended, Balfour and Lloyd George
suggested that I be called in, and messengers were sent for me. They
looked for me high and low — ^and I happened to be a few doors away in
the office of Ormsby-Gore. I missed a great opportunity — and this was
entirely due to Philip Kerr. Perhaps, however, it was better so. I might,
in that setting, with Montagu in front of me, have said something harsh
or inappropriate. I might have made matters worse instead of better.
Certain it was that Montagu's opposition, coupled with the sustained
attacks which the tiny anti-Zionist group had been conducting for
months — their letters to the press, the pamphlets, some of them written
pseudonymously by Lucien Wolf, their feverish interviews with Govern-
ment officials — ^was responsible for the compromise formula which the
War Cabinet submitted to us a few days later.

It was on the seventh of October that I wrote to Kerr the letter quoted
on page 179, expressing my chagrin and bewilderment at the attention
paid by the British Government to a handful of assimilated Jews, in
their opposition to what was the deepest hope of millions of Jews whom
we, the Zionists, represented. On October 9, I could cable as follows
to Justice Brandeis:

The cabinet after preliminary discussion suggested following amended
formula :

“His Majesty's Government view with favor the establishment in
Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish race and will use its best
endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object; it being clearly
understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil
and religious rights of the existing non- Jewish communities in Pales-
tine, or the rights and political status enjoyed in any other country by
such Jews who are fully contented with their existing nationality and
citizenship."

Most likely shall be asked to appear before the cabinet when final
discussion takes place in about a week. It is essential to have not only
President's approval of text, but his recommendation to grant this
declaration without delay. Further your support and enthusiastic

THE BALFOUR DECLARATION

207

message to us from American Zionists and also prominent non-Zionists

most desirable to us. Your support urgently needed.

A comparison of the two texts — ^the one approved by the Foreign
Office and the Prime Minister, and the one adopted on October 4, after
Montagu's attack — shows a painful recession from what the Government
itself was prepared to offer. The first declares that ^Talestine should be
reconstituted as the National Home of the Jewish people." The second
speaks of ‘hhe establishment in Palestine of a National Home for the
Jewish Race." The first adds only that the ‘'Government will use its
best endeavors to secure the achievement of this object and will discuss
the necessary methods with the Zionist Organization"; the second intro-
duced the subject of the “civic and religious rights of the existing non-
Jewish communities" in such a fashion as to impute possible oppressive
intentions to the Jews, and can be interpreted to mean such limitations
on our work as completely to cripple it.

I was not given a chance to present our views to the War Cabinet,
and the anti-Zionists alone had their say at the October 4 session. The
cabinet actually did not know what to do with the obstructionist Jews.
Sykes, Amery, Ormsby-Gore were nonplussed. In the end it was decided
to send out the text to eight Jews, four anti-Zionists and four Zionists,
for comments and suggestions, with a covering letter in which it was
stated that “in view of the divergence of opinion expressed on the sub-
ject by the Jews themselves, they [the Government] would like to receive
in writing the views of representative Jewish leaders, both Zionist and
non-Zionist."

We, on our part, examined and re-examined the formula, comparing
the old text with the new. We saw the differences only too clearly, but
we did not dare to occasion further delay by pressing for the original
formula, which represented not only our wishes, but the attitude of the
members of the Government. In replying to the letter of the Government
I said: “Instead of the establishment of a Jewish National Home, would
it not be more desirable to use the word 're-establishment'? By this
small alteration the historical connection with the ancient tradition would
be indicated and the whole matter put in its true light. May I also suggest
■'Jewish people' instead of 'Jewish Race.' " (This last suggestion actually
came from- Mr. Brandeis.)

It goes without saying that this second formula, emasculated as it was,
represented a tremendous event in exilic Jewish history — ^and that it was
as bitter a pill to swallow for the Jewish assimilationists as the recession
from the original, more forthright, formula was for us. It is one of the
ifs of history whether we should have been intransigeant, and stood by
our guns. Should we then have obtained a better statement ? Or would
the Government have become wearied of these internal Jewish divisions,
and dropped the whole matter? Again, the result might have been such

2o8

TRIAL AND ERROR

a long delay that the war would have ended before an agreement was
reached, and then all the advantage of a timely decision would have been
lost. Our judgment was, to accept, to press for ratification. For we knew'
that the assimilationists would use every delay for their own purposes ;
and we also knew that in America the same internal Jewish struggle was
going on — complicated by the fact that President Wilson, who was
wholeheartedly with us, considered the publication of a declaration pre-
mature, in view of the fact that no state of war existed between America
and Turkey. Brandeis' intention was to obtain from President Wilson a
public expression of sympathy. In this he was not successful. But on
October i6, Colonel House, acting for President Wilson, cabled the
British Government America’s support of the substance of the declara-
tion. This was one of the most important individual factors in breaking
the deadlock created by the British Jewish anti-Zionists, and in deciding
the British Government to issue its declaration.

On November 2 , after a final discussion in the War Cabinet, Balfour
issued the famous letter known as the Balfour Declaration. It was ad-
dressed to Lord Rothschild. In an earlier talk with Balfour, when he
had asked me to whom the forthcoming declaration should be addressed,
I suggested Lord Rothschild rather than myself, though I was President
of the English Zionist Federation. The text read:

His Majesty’s Government view with favor the establishment in
Palestine of a National Home for the Jewish people, and will use their
best endeavors to facilitate the achievement of this object; it being
clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the
civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in
Palestine or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any
other country.

While the cabinet was in session, approving the final text, I was wait-
ing outside, this time within call. Sykes brought the document out to me,
with the exclamation: 'Hr. Weizmann, it’s a boy!”

Well — I did not like the boy at first. He was not the one I had ex-
pected. But I knew that this was a great departure. I telephoned my
wife, and went to see Acliad Ha-am,

A new chapter had opened for us, full of new difficulties, but not
without its great moments.

Book Two

CHAPTER 1 9

The Zionist Commission
Anticipation and Realities

What the Framers of the Balfour Declaration Intended — Ap-
pointment of the Zionist Commission — Preparations, Including
Reception by the King — Small Beginnings of Great Troubles —
I Am Presented to King George V — Leonard Stein in Taranto
— Wartime Cairo, igi8 — Arrival in Palestine — Military Dis-
regard of Balfour Declaration — Causes Behind This Attitude
— General Wyndham Deedes Introduces Me to Protocols of
Elders of Zion — The Helpfulness of General Deedes — General
Allenby’s Attitude — Establishing Myself with GHQ — Hammer
and Anvil — Hostile Military Administrators — Natural Diffi-
culties and Unnecessary Ones — Allenby Becomes Friendly —
Damage Already Done,

A GENERATION has passed since the Balfour Declaration became
history. It is not easy to recapture, at this distance, the spirit of
elation which attended its issuance — a spirit shared by non-Jews and
Jews alike: on the Jewish side the expectation of imminent redemption,
on the non-Jewish side the profound satisfaction awakened by a great
act of restitution. Certainly there were dissident voices on both sides,
but they were overborne by numbers and by moral authority. The
foremost statesmen of the time had collaborated in the declaration.
Balfour was to say later that he looked upon it as the great achievement
of his life; Viscount Robert Cecil, one of the founders of the League
of Nations, considered the Jewish Homeland to be of equal importance
with the League itself. And in spite of the phrasing the intent was clear.
President Wilson declared : ‘T am persuaded that the Allied nations, with
the full concurrence of our Government and our people, are agreed
that in Palestine shall be laid the foundations of a Jewish Common-
wealth."" Speaking for Balfour and himself, Lloyd George tells us in
his memoirs :

As to the meaning of the words 'National Home" to which the Zionists

attach so much importance, he [Balfour]* understood it to mean some

21 1

212

TRIAL AND ERROR

form of British, American or other protectorate, under which full
facilities would be given to the Jews to work out their own salvation
and to build up, by means of education, agriculture and industry, a real
center of national culture and focus of national life. . . . There can
be no doubt as to what the [Imperial War] Cabinet then had in their
minds. It was not their idea that a Jewish State should be set up
immediately by the Peace Treaty without reference to the wishes
of the majority of the inhabitants. On the other hand, it was contem-
plated that when the time arrived for according representative
institutions to Palestine, if the Jews had meanwhile responded to
the opportunity afforded them and had become a definite majority
of the inhabitants, then Palestine would thus become a Jewish
Commonwealth. The notion that Jewish immigration would have to
be artificially restricted in order that the Jews should be a permanent
minority never entered the head of anyone engaged in framing the
policy. That would have been regarded as unjust and as a fraud on the
people to whom we were appealing.

It will be, among other things, my painful duty to retrace to their
beginnings the steps which have placed such a gap between the promise
of the declaration and the performance ; and those beginnings, I regret to
say, coincided with the first efforts to translate policy into actuality.

Early in 1918, His Majesty’s Government decided to send a Zionist
commission to Palestine to survey the situation and to prepare plans
in the spirit of the Balfour Declaration. The commission was to be
representative of the Jews of all the principal Allied countries ; but as
America was not at war with Turkey, she did not feel able to appoint
representatives, and the Russian members, though duly appointed, were
unable for ‘'political reasons” to leave in time to join us. There came to
join us, then, the Italians and the French.

The Italian Government sent us Commendatore Levi Bianchini, who
proved to be a most devoted worker, collaborating closely with every
aspect of our work in Palestine ; but one soon got the impression that his
devotion had an Italian rather than a Palestinian bias. In the light of
subsequent developments it is easy to understand the deep interest
evinced by the Italians in Zionist activities in Palestine even in those
early days. Already the Jewish National Home was viewed with a
certain jealousy and suspicion as tending to strengthen British influence
in “Mare Nostrum”; and every effort was made to offset this by
encouraging Italian participation in Palestine’s economic development.
It was repeatedly suggested to us that we might make use of Italian
firms, Italian workers, Italian supplies for the execution of our pre-
liminary work.

The French sent us Professor Sylvain Levi, an avowed anti-Zionist !
He was forced upon us by the French Government — which had made
strong representations to the British — and by Baron Edmond de

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

213

Rothschild, who felt that the presence of Sylvain Levi on the commission,
in spite (or even because) of his known views, would help us to combat
certain opposition currents in French Jewish opinion; this with especial
reference to the anti-Zionist Alliance Israelite, of which Sylvain Levi
was the distinguished President. Like Commendatore Bianchini, Levi
was a devoted worker in the field — and in the same spirit. He seemed
to feel that it was his business to keep the French end up. He showed
great interest, of course, in the settlements of the PICA (Palestine
Jewish Colonization Association) founded by Baron Edmond de Roths-
child long before the Zionist Organization was in a position to take up
practical work in the country. Sometimes one could not help feeling that
M. Levi looked a little askance at the growth of Zionist influence as an
infringement on the virtual monopoly enjoyed till then by the PICA,

Mr. James de Rothschild, Baron Edmond's son, acted as a kind of
liaison officer between ourselves and the PICA interests in Palestine,
and was naturally somewhat biased in favor of the settlements created
by his father. Mr. de Rothschild was and was not a member of the
Zionist Commission. He attended all our meetings, but did not wish
to be officially identified with us. Occasionally this state of things would
create an awkward situation, which would usually be relieved by the
diplomatic talents of Major Ormsby-Gore (now Lord Harlech), our
liaison officer with the British military authorities.

The representatives of English Jewry on the commission were, besides'
myself, Mr. Joseph Cowen, Dr. David Eder, Mr. Leon Simon, and Mr.
I. M. Sieff (secretary).

Our departure was set for Monday, March 8, 1918. A few days before
that date Sir Mark Sykes, who was responsible for collecting and
organizing us, and making our traveling arrangements — ^no easy task
in wartime — suddenly had the idea that it would be useful for the
prestige of the commission if I, as its chairman, were to be received by
His Majesty the King before we left. I was deeply appreciative — as we
all were — of the honor, but I had some misgivings as to the wisdom of
the step. I knew that we were setting out on a long and difficult road,
and I felt that it would be better to defer the audience until we had
something substantial to our credit in Palestine, and could report
progress. But the authorities whom we consulted thought otherwise, and
naturally I fell in with their views.

Here the first of .those incidents occurred which were to make the
Zionist Commission a sort of prelude or thematic overture to the future.
Arrangements were made for me to be taken to the palace on the Satur-
day morning preceding the departure. I bought, and put on, my first and
last top hat, and came to the Foreign Office at the appointed hour, to
find a very confused and apologetic Sir Mark Sykes, who informed me
that he had just received some "Very disquieting" telegrams from

TRIAL AND ERROR

214

Cairo, to the efifect that the Arabs were beginning to ask uncomfortable
questions. ... He was inclined to think that it might be better to cancel
the audience.

In a sense this did no more than vindicate my first instinctive reaction
to the suggested audience ; but at this point I simply could not agree to
the cancellation, and certainly not on the ground specified. The audience
had, of course, not been given any publicity; but it was known in the
narrow circle of my colleagues, and they would be deeply distressed by
what they would regard both as a serious setback and a bad augury for
the future. I told Sir Mark what I felt on this point and urged him to
arrange another audience in spite of the shortness of time available. Sir
Mark, while underlining his personal sympathy for our position, felt
unable to do this, and so we stood in a corridor of the Foreign Office
engaged in heated and at times painful discussion. We were joined by
Major Ormsby-Gore, who was inclined to take my view of the subject.
I remember maintaining with much emphasis and warmth that if we were
going to be deflected from a considered line of action by such things as
telegrams vaguely indicating some stirrings of the Arab world, our
work in Palestine would be utterly impossible, and we had better not
go out at all.

The argument went on for what seemed a long time ; and eventually
we decided that the best thing to do would be to put the position to Mr.
Balfour, who happened at this moment to come into view mounting the
Foreign Office stairs. Sir Mark suggested that I should see him; I
preferred to have Sir Mark put the case, knowing he would present it
in the fairest possible light. Major Ormsby-Gore and I waited outside
the room for half an hour or so, and then Sir Mark emerged to say that
Mr. Balfour thought that the audience should take place, and was at
that moment telephoning to the palace to explain that the whole mis-
understanding had arisen through his own late arrival at the office! A
second audience was fixed there and then for the following Monday
morning — ^the very day of our departure for Palestine.

And so I was presented to His Majesty King George V. The first
thing he said on greeting me was : “You know, Mr. Balfour always does
come late to the office. I quite understand.’" He then turned the subject to
Palestine, and showed great interest in our plans. Knowing me to be of
Russian birth he also spoke at some length on the Russian Revolution —
then front-page news — saying at one point: ‘T always warned Nicky
about the risks he ran in maintaining that regime; but he would not
listen.” He then returned to the purpose of the audience and wished us
success in our endeavors.

The same evening we set out on our journey. Our land itinerary was
Paris-Rome-Taranto. In Taranto we were to take ship through the
submarine-infested waters of the Mediterranean to Alexandria, and

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 215

there we spent seven days waiting for an escort. It was a desolate place,
short of food and destitute of any occupation or distraction. The only
civilized spot was the British rest camp for soldiers and sailors traveling
to and from the Middle East. Toward the end of my stay, when I was
getting desperate with boredom, I discovered that my old friend Leonard
Stein was also among the marooned at Taranto. I had not seen him
since the outbreak of the war, and I had much to tell him. We went
together to Taranto’s one small hotel and took a room. It was a steaming
hot day. He lay on one bed, I on the other. And for hours I talked,
recounting the story of the last four years and the negotiations leading up
to the Balfour Declaration, all of which he heard for the first time.

The only relief from the tedium of Taranto town was a stroll on the
beach, whence there was a good view of the magnificent array of Italian
battleships, destroyers and other fighting craft, securely locked up behind
double bars in Taranto port. It seemed odd that with all that naval force
lying idle a substantial British transport should be kept waiting seven
days for lack of escort (to be provided, eventually, by the solitary
Japanese destroyer which plied between Taranto and Alexandria).
Innocently, I inquired of a British Vice-Admiral who was among my
fellow-travelers why the Italian destroyers could not act as escorts, and
thereby unleashed an outburst of fury which staggered me: ‘These
Italians are fit for nothing but to sit behind double locks in port ! They
like it! Once I had dire need of a destroyer — ^not for escort, for real
work — ^and I only got it by threatening to ram their blasted gates !”

Finally we set out on our nine-day zigzag for Alexandria. Most of the
passengers were soldiers or sailors on leave, but there was a sprinkling
of important Egyptian or Levantine civilians, looking to my eyes very
like divers, or Michelin tire advertisements, owing to the extraordinary
assortment of life belts, inflatable waistcoats, and so on, in which they
decked themselves.

The commission reached Alexandria just before the Feast of Passover,
and spent about three weeks there. This was my first contact with the
great Sephardic community of Eg3q)t, and also with the innumerable
Arab coteries in which Egypt abounded at this time. The latter were
organized — ^if that is the right word — ^into separate political groups, all
busy pulling wires in different directions. Wartime Cairo was one vast
labyrinth of petty intrigues, and we should have been rather helpless
without the skillful guidance of Major Ormsby-Gore and Sir Reginald
Wingate. Sir Reginald, in particular, had had great experience with
Arabs and Arab mentality, and was generous with his advice.

Curiously enough, and in spite of the telegram received by Sir Mark
Sykes, we observed no hostility, even in circles dominated by people like
Nim’r, the famous editor of MokaUam. This was possibly due to our
inexperience; we were still unable to read between the lines. We were

2i6 trial and error

repeatedly warned by our official friends, as well as by the few members
of the Jewish community who came to our assistance — most of them, I
regret to say, instead of providing us with a bridge between East and
West, remained as remote as the Arabs — ^never to attack any problem
directly. The Arab is a very subtle debater and controversialist— much
more so than the average educated European — and until one has acquired
the technique one is at a great disadvantage. In particular, the Arab
has an immense talent for expressing views diametrically opposed to
yours with such exquisite and roundabout politeness that you believe him
to be in complete agreement with you, and ready to join hands with you
at once. Conversations and negotiations with Arabs are not unlike
chasing a mirage in the desert : full of promise and good to look at, but
likely to lead you to death by thirst.

A direct question is dangerous : it provokes in the Arab a skillful with-
drawal and a complete change of subject. The problem must be
approached by winding lanes, and it takes an interminable time to reach
the kernel of the subject. Toward the end of our stay in Egypt we began
to penetrate a little way behind the veil of words, and occasionally to
catch a glimpse of the real meaning covered by what at first seemed to
be a mass of irrelevant verbiage.

It was not easy for us to get at the temper of Egypt with regard to the
war, which had then been going on for nearly four years. There was still
no definite outcome. A great coalition of nations seemed unable to batter
down the Central Powers, and German armies, in their last desperate
push— as it turned out to be— were even threatening Paris and the
Channel ports. On the whole we decided that the Egyptian atmosphere
was not entirely friendly to the Allied cause.

From the confusion of Egypt the commission drifted piecemeal into
Palestine, First went Mr. James de Rothschild, as a kind of advance
guard. He was invited by Allenby to stay at GHQ where he had many
friends, and a cousin, Dalmeny (now Lord Rosebery), acting as ADC
to the Commander in Chief. It was my feeling that he preferred to go
alone, and not be identified with us too closely on his arrival in Palestine.
A little later I received an invitation to stay at GHQ for a few days. My
colleagues, accompanied by Major Ormsby-Gore (now installed with
us as our liaison officer), followed shortly after.

Within a week we found ourselves assembled in Palestine, settled
in Tel Aviv in the house of David Levontin, who was then absent from
the country. Tel Aviv at this time was a little seaside town consisting
of perhaps a hundred houses and a few hundred inhabitants. It was
quiet, almost desolate, among its sand dunes, but not unattractive, though
it had been cut off from the outside world for nearly four years, and
had suffered under both the German and Turkish occupations.

GHQ was in Ramleh — or rather in Bir Salem — ^in a building formerly

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

217

a small German hospice, standing on a hill surrounded by orange groves,
and visible from our present home in Rehovoth. It was a modest house
but, for the prevailing conditions, quite comfortable. On my arrival I
found myself at once in the war atmosphere, an abrupt and startling
change from Cairo. At breakfast the first morning I was wedged in be-
tween General Allenby and General Bols, who talked war across me —
casualties, attacks, retreats — and I could not but sense a certain strain in
the atmosphere. In fact, I felt we could hardly have descended on GHQ at
a more inopportune moment. The news from the Western front was
bad; most of the European troops in Palestine were being withdrawn
to reinforce the armies in France. The train which had brought me
from Cairo had been promptly loaded with officers and men being
rushed to the West. Allenby ’s own advance was completely checked;
he was left with a small Indian Moslem force, and the Arabs, quick to
sense the weakening in the British position, were showing signs of
restiveness. Our arrival was definitely no accession of strength or
comfort, especially as Arab agitators lost no time in proclaiming that
“the British had sent for the Jews to take over the country.’^

This was only the beginning of our difficulties. I soon discovered that
the Balfour Declaration, which had made such a stir in the outside
world, had never reached many of Allenby^s officers, even those of
high rank. They knew nothing about it, and nothing about the sympathy
shown at that time to our aims and aspirations by prominent English-
men in every walk of life. They were cut off from Europe ; their minds
were naturally concentrated on the job in hand, which meant winning
the war or — more precisely at the moment — ^holding their own on their
particular front, and not being rolled back by the Turks under Liman
von Sanders. Unfortunately this was not all; there were deeper and
so to speak more organic obstacles in the mental attitude of many of
Allenby’s officers. The scanty Jewish population, worn out by years of
privation and isolation, speaking little English, seemed to them to be
the sweepings of Russian and Polish ghettos. And Russia at this time
was hardly in the good books of the Allies, for it was soon after the
Bolshevik revolution, which on the whole they identified with Russian
Jewry; Russians, Jews, Bolsheviks were different words for the same
thing in the minds of most of the British officers in Palestine in those
days, and even when they were not entirely ignorant of developments,
they saw little reason to put themselves out for the Jews — Declaration
or no Declaration.

This peculiar situation had not, however, developed of itself. In an
early conversation with General (now Sir Wyndham) Deedes (he was
one of the few who did understand our position), I learned of at least
one of the sources of our tribulations. Suddenly, and without introduc-
tion, he handed me a few sheets of typewritten script, and asked me to

2i8

TRIAL AND ERROR

read them carefully. I read the first sheet and looked up in some per-
plexity, asking what could be the meaning of all this rubbish. General
Deedes replied quietly, and rather sternly: ^^You had better read all of
it with care; it is going to cause you a great deal of trouble in the
future.” This was my first meeting with extracts from the Protocols of
the Elders of Zion.

Completely baffled, I asked Deedes how the thing had reached him,
and what it meant. He answered, slowly and sadly : ‘'You will find it in
the haversack of a great many British officers here — and they believe
it ! It was brought over by the British Military Mission which has been
serving in the Caucasus on the staff of the Grand Duke Nicholas.”

It would be a mistake to imagine that the views of the whole British
army were tainted by the ideas expressed in the Protocols of the Elders
of Zion; but at a time when the horrors of the Bolshevik revolution
were fresh in everyone's mind the most fantastic rumors and slanders —
operating frequently on existing backgrounds of prejudice — ^gained
credence, and the extracts from the Protocols which I then saw had
been obviously selected to cater to the taste of a certain type of British
reader.

But even without this unpredictable blow at us our position was diffi-
cult enough. On meeting Allenby I had of course handed over my cre-
dentials and letters of introduction from Mr. Lloyd George, Mr. Balfour
and others; but warm though their terms were, I saw that they made
little impression. Almost his first remark was: “Yes, but of course
nothing can be done at present. We have to be extremely careful not
to hurt the susceptibilities of the population.” He was polite, even kind,
in manner, but not at all forthcoming when we got down to the purposes
of the commission. One felt that this was a military world, and in it
only soldiers had a right to exist. Civilians were a nuisance. But here
we were — a very motley group of civilians — injected into the military
organism like a foreign body. . . . The messianic hopes which we had
read into the Balfour Declaration suffered a perceptible diminution when
we came into contact with the hard realities of GHQ,

I stayed three days at Bir Salem. Rightly or wrongly, I felt that
those days were in the nature of a period of probation. Authority
wanted to see a little more of me, and find out what kind of fellow had
been inflicted on them by the politicians in London before they let me
loose in Palestine, I had no chance of communicating with various
friends of mine in Rishon or Rehovoth, who had been eagerly awaiting
my arrival. I was little more than a mile away from them, but there
was no bridge leading from GHQ to the surrounding villages. I spent
an anxious three days. I had to mind every word I said, and suppress
a great many ideas I had brought out with me, putting them into cold
storage for the time being. Major James de Rothschild was of course

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

219

on much more intimate terms with the staff than I was ; many of them
were old friends of his. But his contribution toward raising* my morale
was confined to repeated 'warnings not to say anything and not to do
anything: ‘'Remember, walls have ears!”

It was always a relief to go into Deedes’s tent; with him I could
speak freely, dream freely. He it was who initiated me into the habits
of military camps, and eventually put me in touch with General Clayton,
the political officer of the army in Palestine, in whose charge the com-
mission had been officially placed. The second night of my stay in Bir
Salem I spent entirely in Deedes’s tent. We talked of the present and
of the future, and I told him of my hopes and plans. He listened
patiently and benignly to it all ; both critical and sympathetic, he warned
me of the many obstacles I should have to overcome, but ended by re-
minding me that faith could move mountains. We talked until we were
exhausted, and eventually he had a camp bed put up for me and I
passed the remainder of the night — a, short two hours! — under canvas
with him. We awoke to find that the “latter rains” had come upon us
while we slept, and the whole floor of the tent was covered with spring
flowers. We took them as a happy omen.

That morning, as I stood in front of my tent, which was near the
main road, I saw Allenby driving past. He stopped, and after a friendly
greeting motioned me to get into the car with him, saying that he was
going up to Jerusalem and thought I might like to go up with him.
He was right: I was devoured by the desire to “go up to Jerusalem.”
But something within held me back. I remembered the rather curious
reticence of the last couple of days, and after a minute I said : “I would
like to come; but in the circumstances don’t you think it would be
better for me to go a little later, and in my own time? It might be
embarrassing for you to be seen entering the capital with me.” Allenby
got out of the car and stood by me for a minute or two, apparently
deep in thought; tlien he smiled and held out his hand to me: “You
are quite right — ^and I think we are going to be great friends.” From
that time I felt that, with the Commander in Chief anyhow, the ice
was broken. Eventually we did go up to Jerusalem together, but that
was in July — ^just before the laying of the foundation stones of the
Hebrew University.

After those three days I was, so to say, released from GHQ; my
colleagues and I were given free passes, a car, petrol, and — greatest
favor of all — our own telephone. We were, I believe, the only civilians
in Palestine to be so privileged. I was determined that no action of
mine should destroy the tender plant of confidence which had begun to
grow up between GHQ and ourselves. And this — ^though mercifully I
did not know it at the time — ^was the beginning of the hard road which
I have had to tread for practically the rest of my life. I was placed

220

TRIAL AND ERROR

between the hammer and the anvil — ^between the slow-moving, un-
imaginative, conservative and often unfriendly British administration,
military or civil, and the impatient, dynamic Jewish people, which
saw in the Balfour Declaration the great promise of the return to them
of their own country, and contrasted it resentfully with the admini-
strative realities in Palestine.

There were, of course, notable and noble exceptions in those early
days, like Wyndham Deedes and Gilbert Clayton and the Commander
in Chief himself. But they were not the men in daily contact with the
population; they were immersed in the conduct of the war, and had to
leave the details of administration to men of lower rank in the military
hierarchy ; and these were, almost without exception, devoid of under-
standing, or vision, or even of kindness.

The Governor of Jaffa— and thus of Tel Aviv— was at this time a
Colonel Hubbard. Under him he had, if not the largest, then certainly
the most active Jewish community in Palestine. But in all his actions and
utterances, trivial as most of them were, he went out of his way to
discourage the Jews and encourage the Arabs, in so far as it was pos-
sible for him to do so. A typical instance, taken from a note made at
the time was his reception of a small committee of Jewish agricultural
engineers, surveyors, and so on, who had occasion to visit Nablus
(under official Government auspices) to inspect some Jiftlik (State)
land in the neighborhood. Colonel Hubbard told them — ^jokingly,^ per-
haps, but if so it was a bad joke— that if they did not leave immediately
they ran the risk of being half killed by the excited populace. He
added a contemptuous reference to President Wilson, ‘^who meddles
too much with Palestine,^' and concluded by saying that if the com-
mittee wished to travel through the Jiftlik it would have to take a reg-
iment of soldiers along. In conversation with friends he was wont to say
that if ^^trouble’' should occur in Jaffa, he would take no responsibility
for it, and would not interfere, or allow troops under his command to
interfere.

Then there was Colonel Ronald Storrs, in Jerusalem. He was much
more subtle in his approach. He was everyone’s friend; but, try as he
might, he failed to gain the confidence of his Jewish community. The
chief administrator, General Money, had on his staff several advisers
and officials who, from the first moment, felt it to be their duty to
impress upon the Jewish communities under their charge that, what-
ever the politicians in London might have been fools enough to say or
do, hsTe we were in a quite different world i ^^Nous allofis cha/yigeT tout
celaJ’

With the best will in the world those early days in Palestine would
have been difficult enough. The Jewish community was depleted, dere-
lict and disorganized. Most of its leading figures had been banished by

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

2S1

the Turkish authorities, either to Damascus or to Constantinople.
Ruppin, our able colonization expert, was in Constantinople. W e
missed equally Meir Dizengoff, the distinguished mayor of Tel Aviv.
This was a moderate, practical, level-headed man who served the city
for nearly three decades after the period of which I am writing. He
attended conscientiously to his duties and to the needs of the Yishuv,
unbiased by party feeling. His opinions were respected by everyone,
and almost universally accepted. Deprived of him and a few others
like him, the Jews of wartime Palestine hardly knew which way to
turn. The German and Turkish occupations had exhausted and dis-
rupted the Jewish settlements, and numbers of Jews had fled to Egypt
as refugees. After the occupation by the British Army they began to
drift back. There was, of course, a great scarcity of commodities, and
as soon as the road to Egypt was opened people began to press for
permits to go and replenish their stocks. This became a source of much
trouble for the commission, for we were the official intermediaries
between the Jewish population and the military authorities. Only one
railway line connected Palestine with Egypt, and there was only one
train daily in each direction. The limited accommodations were badly
needed for military purposes, and it was not possible to obtain permits
for civilians except for the most urgent reasons. With great reluctance
I found myself obliged to forward applications to the transport officer
from time to time, though I kept them down as far as possible. Even
with a friendly attitude on the part of British officers such necessary
restrictions were bound to become a source of grievance both against
the commission and the British authorities.

But the attitude of far too many of the British officers toward the
Jews could by no stretch of the imagination be called friendly, and this
was particularly the case in the district of Jaffa. And in that atmosphere
of tension and expectation the reasonable and the unreasonable restric-
tions were often lumped together ; trivial things assumed the importance
of affairs of state; and there were instances of discrimination which I
did not consider trivial at all. I did my best to smooth over the rough
places, but my assurances to the Jews that these frictions and incon-
veniences were inevitable in a period of transition went unheeded in
the face of the realities of daily life. It was no use telling them that it
was farfetched to draw ultimate conclusions from the attitude of this or
that officer, and that the men who really counted understood our
troubles and were with us, not against us. The fact was, after all, that
though General Deedes and Clayton gave much of their time and diplo-
matic skill to easing the situation, the general relations between the
British authorities on the spot and the Jewish population grew more
and more strained, and there were only a few points where normal

222

TRIAL AND ERROR

friendly relations existed and where the indispensable good will was
actively being fostered.

And then an incident occurred which made it necessary for me to
bring the whole matter to the attention of the Commander in Chief.

Some time in May 1918, we heard that the colony of Petach Tikvah
(one of the premier settlements established by Baron Edmond de
Rothschild in the early i88o’s) would have to be evacuated for military
reasons. Regrettable as this was from the point of view of the settlers,
no reasonable person could raise any objection to it if military exigencies
required it. The military authorities on the spot promised me that,
should the suggested evacuation be definitely decided on, due notice
would be given and the Zionist Commission would be allowed to help
in the arrangements ; that is to say, we would provide housing for the
evacuees, in Tel Aviv and elsewhere, we would see to it that their
plantations were looked after, and we would let them have reports
from time to time. I had already informed the colonists of this under-
standing between us and the military, and they had naturally accepted
it. Suddenly, on the eve of the Feast of Pentecost, a messenger came
to us posthaste from Petach Tikvah, saying that orders had been given
to evacuate the colony the next morning, and that all our careful prep-
arations had apparently gone for nothing. What made matters worse
was that there were two Arab villages nearer to the front than Petach
Tikvah, and they had received no evacuation orders. For this, of course,
there may have been military reasons, but it was very hard to under-
stand just the same. Deductions — ^not pleasant ones — ^were naturally
made from these developments: Jews were not trusted, and had to be
turned out; Arabs, who were known to cross the enemy lines repeatedly,
were left unmolested. It was difficult for me, inexperienced as I was,
to appreciate the true position, and after a great deal of heartsearching
I decided to go to the fountainhead, and asked for an interview with
the Commander in Chief.

I was invited to dinner with General Allenby the same evening. I
had not seen him since my first days in Palestine. After dinner, the
General suggested that we find a quiet place to talk, as he had all the
night before him : there would probably be some sort of skirmish before
dawn, and he could not in any case expect any sleep. I began by ex-
plaining to him the Petach Tikvah .tangle, about which he naturally
knew little, since the orders had been given by the divisional officer
and GHQ was not yet informed of them. He agreed, however, that the
matter ought to be looked into, and asked his ADC to make inquiries
there and then and report back to him immediately. The result was
that the evacuation was postponed for a few days, and the arrangements
previously made for it were upheld.

There was, however, more to our talk. The General asked me for a

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 223

more detailed report on the relations between the Jewish population and
his administration. This gave me my opening, and I proceeded to ex-
plain that, while we understood that matters of high policy could not
at the moment be implemented, and that the Balfour Declaration could
not find practical application till after the war, the continuance of
strained relations between the Jewish population and the British mili-
tary authorities was doing no good to anyone at present, and might
seriously prejudice the future. It was not simply a matter of relations
between the Jews and the British, nor was it the immediate question
of the particular rebuffs or setbacks. It was rather the effect on the
Arab mind. The Jews were anxious to help the British; they had re-
ceived the troops with open arms ; they were on the best of terms with
the Anzacs. But it seemed as though the local administration was bent
on ignoring the Home Government’s attitude toward our aspirations in
Palestine, or, what was worse, was going out of its way to show definite
hostility to the policy initiated in London. The outlook for later rela-
tions between Jews and Arabs was, in these circumstances, not a promis-
ing one.

This was my first opportunity of discussing at length with General
Allenby questions of policy and our future. Like most of the English-
men at that time in Palestine the Commander in Chief, though not
hostile, was inclined to be skeptical, though not because he feared trouble
from the Arabs ; it was rather that, in his view, Palestine had no future
for the Jews. Indeed, the Arab question at that time seemed to give
no grounds for anxiety. Such prominent Arab spokesmen as there were
had more or less acquiesced in the policy; at any rate, they made no
protest. With some of them — like the old Mufti of Jerusalem, and Musa
Kazim Husseini — ^we had established very friendly relations; and, as
will be seen in the next chapter but one, the titular and actual leader
of the Arab world, the Emir*Feisal, was even enthusiastically with us.
What I had to overcome in the Commander in Chief, then, was a
genuine skepticism as to the intrinsic practicality of the plan for the
Jewish Homeland.

I pointed out to him that there were untapped resources of energy
and initiative lying dormant in the Jewish people, which would be re-
leased by the impact of this new opportunity. These energies, I believed,
would be capable of transforming even a derelict country like Palestine.

I reminded him of the villages founded by Baron Edmond de Roths-
child, which even in those days were oases of fertility in the surround-
ing wastes of sand — in startling contrast to the Arab villages, with their
mud hovels and dunghills. I tried with all my might to impart to the
Commander in Chief some of the confidence which I myself felt — in*
part because I had come to have a great personal regard for him, and
also because I felt that his attitude might be crucial when the time came

224

TRIAL AND ERROR

to get down to practical problems. I remember that toward the end o£
the long talk, when I felt his resistance yielding a little, I said something
like this :

“You have conquered a great part of Palestine, and you can measure
your conquest by one of two yardsticks: either in square kilometers —
and in that sense your victory, though great, is not unique: the Ger-
mans have overrun vaster areas — or else by the yardstick of history.
If this conquest of yours be measured by the centuries of hallowed
tradition which attach to every square kilometer of its ground, then
yours is one of the greatest victories in history. And the traditions
which make it so are largely bound up with the history of my people.
The day may come when we shall make good your victory, so that it
may remain graven in something more enduring than rock — in the
lives of men and nations. It would be a great pity if anything were
done now — for instance by a few officials or administrators — ^to mar
this victory."'

He seemed at first a little taken back by this tirade ; but when I had
finished he said: “Well, let’s hope it will be made good.”

After this interview relations between ourselves and the administra-
tion underwent a certain improvement; but on the whole the spirit
governing officialdom was not conducive to co-operation between our-
selves and the British or between ourselves and the Arabs. There were
constant changes of governors under the military occupation, with
constant setbacks. Whether the Arabs got positive encouragement to
oppose the Allied policy from one or two of the British officials, or
whether they just drew their own conclusions from the day-to-day
conduct of these gentlemen, it is impossible to say, much less to prove.
Nor does it much matter. The fact was that Arab hostility gained in
momentum as the days passed; and by the time a civil administration
under Sir Herbert Samuel took over, the gulf between the two peoples
was already difficult to bridge.

CHAPTER 2 O

The Zionist Commission
Challukkah Jewry

A Picturesque Old Community — Our Good Intentions Mis-
understood — Dr. M. D. Eder and the Challukkah Jews —
Jabotinsky as Political Liaison — The Other -Worldliness of
Challukkah Jews — Myrtles for the Feast of Tabernacles —
The Commander in Chief Provides Them.

^ JL HERE was a second Jewish community in Palestine, which was
equally the concern of the Zionist Commission — an old, quaint, pictur-
esque and appealing community which long antedated the coming of
the elements which were concerned with the upbuilding of the Jewish
Homeland. Perhaps one ought to say a “first’ ^ Jewish community, since
it was such in point of time, and certainly in point of numbers. This
was Challukkah Jewry, a settlement which for generations had been
supported by charitable contributions collected among pious and ortho-
dox Jews in the great commimities of Poland, Russia, Hungary, Ger-
many and the United States.

The Challukkah Jews were for the most part elderly, strictly religious
men and women who devoted their last years to prayer, sacred study
and good deeds generally. They lived in a strange world of their own,
fantastically remote from present-day realities, and the majority of
them were hardly conscious of the crisis through which the world was
passing or of its implications for their own future and for that of their
people. All they knew definitely about the war was that it had dried up
the source of most of their income, since no money could now reach
them from their European benefactors. Even the life of abject poverty
to which they were accustomed threatened to become impossible. And
then the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee stepped in,
and charged the Zionist Commission with the distribution of funds
among the various organizations and individuals which had hitherto
been the recipients of Challukkah moneys. This brought us into close
contact with the old Yishuv (or settlement) of the existence of which
most of our members had till then been completely ignorant.

225

226

TRIAL AND ERROR

We found that there existed a number of ''institutions’’ of one kind
or another — schools, hospitals, homes for the aged and the like. Some
were little more than names and decorative letterheads, but some were
genuine if rather primitive organizations engaged in charitable work.
Their management, and the conditions obtaining in them, came as a
severe shock to members of the Commission, whose standards were those
of Western Europe ; and they rebelled against the idea of handing over
funds to institutions whose standards of hygiene and administration
were those of a medieval Oriental world. But the first attempts to
introduce some reasonable change ran up against a stone wall of re-
sistance and unleashed a storm of outrage and indignation: such sug-
gestions were not only anathema, they were heathen, impious, heartless,
ignorant and malevolent. We did our utmost to persuade the Challukkah
Jews that the furthest thing from our minds was to interfere with their
religious views and observances; and we assured the "administrators”
that we were only anxious to make conditions a little modern and
comfortable for their charges. Our well-meant efforts led to tremendous
and interminable discussions in which we, being unversed in Talmudic
logic and dialectic, invariably came off second best. Our only effective
weapon was that we were in control of the Joint Distribution Com-
mittee’s fund; but the effectiveness of this weapon was weakened by
two circumstances so that we had to use it with great circumspection.

First, we disliked very much forcing our point of view on others.
We preferred to use persuasion ; and we could only regret that we had
been created such a stiff-necked, stubborn people.

Second, our friends had, of course, the right of appeal to the military
authorities, who always had a soft spot in their hearts for picturesque
inefficiency and who, as between the dignified, sacerdotal presence, the
flowing robes and the courtly manners of Rabbi X of Hebron, and the
go-ahead, unromantic, practical common sense of Dr. Y of the Com-
mission, infinitely preferred the former. He was — ^perhaps here lies
the point ! — ^the nearest approach provided by the Jewish community to
the Arab sheik ! So we always knew that, in case of trouble with one of
our old gentlemen, leading to an appeal to the Military Governors, we
were, to put it mildly, "for it.”

The burden of this side of our work — and it was a heavy one — ^fell
almost entirely on Dr. David Eder. Superficially you would have said
that there could hardly have been found a less suitable man for the
job. He was Western by birth and upbringing, a scientist. Western in
outlook, leftist in politics, and entirely, or almost entirely, ignorant of
any of the languages in current use in the old Yishuv. But these handi-
caps were purely superficial, and he overcame them. What mattered was
his real kindness, his tolerance and humanity, his eagerness to under-
stand the other’s point of view; and these qualities soon gained for

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

227

him the deep respect and affection of even the most recalcitrant among
them. To nobody but Eder would they open up; he seemed possessed
of some sort of intimate personal magic which charmed away their
fears and suspicions. Eder’s office was always full of these ^‘'clients.’’
An interpreter was present — ^he was, indeed, indispensable — but most
of the conversations seemed to be conducted in the most peculiar mix-
ture of languages I have ever met: broken German and Yiddish, the
few words of Hebrew which Eder had picked up since his arrival in
Palestine and the fewer words of English which the old gentlemen had
acquired — ^these, with a little Ladino, resulted in a dialect which often
defied the best efforts of the interpreter, but somehow served to estab-
lish not only communication, but confidence and understanding, between
Eder and his interlocutors. It may be imagined, indeed, that the progress
was slow ; the remarkable thing was — when I look back on all the diffi-
culties — ^that there was any progress at all.

I must digress here to tell the later story of Dr. Eder. When I left
Palestine, in September of that year, he took charge of the Commission.
Although nominally our relations with the military administration were
in the hands of Jabotinsky, it was Eder^s authority which expressed
itself in the commission, and whenever difficulties arose, either with
the Jewish community or with the military, it was he who was called
upon to straighten matters out. It is remarkable that though in private
he was at times temperamental, and affected a gruff manner, he re-
mained to the outside world a model of patience and forbearance. He
always gained his point by persuasion, and never resorted to threats or
bluster.

Unfortunately the same could not always be said of his political col-
league. Jabotinsky shared few of Eder's external handicaps; he was
familiar with all the necessary languages, speaking fluent French, Eng-
lish, Hebrew and German; he possessed great eloquence and a high
degree of intelligence ; but he seemed to be entirely devoid of poise and
balance and, what was worse, of that mature judgment so urgently
required in that small but very complex world. Actually every member
of the Commission was required to stand between two worlds, as dif-
ferent from each other as could be imagined, and to serve as a bridge ;
a difficult role, unless the bridge rests on solid pillars and has at the
same time enough resilience to withstand the shock of large and ex-
cited crowds.

Jabotinsky took over from me — ^theoretically — b, few days before I
left the country, so that I had an opportunity of watching, from a dis-
tance, his zeal and ardor, of which General Clayton, the political officer,
was an early victim. When I came into Clayton’s tent to take leave of
him on the eve of my departure, he very quietly remarked to me that
he thought it might be useful if I would impress upon Captain Jabo-

228

TRIAL AND ERROR

tinsky that things would be much easier if he would fix definite hours
each day at which to call upon him to transact business, and not to
walk in on him at all hours of the day and night ! Coming from Clayton,
whom I knew to be so well disposed toward us, this remark did not
augur well for my successor. I tried to impress on Jabotinsky the need
for caution, and naturally warned Eder, who shared my^ anxiety. He
promised to keep an eye on things, and he did, with his usual con-
scientiousness and devotion.

Eder was a tower of strength to us in those days. He understood the
British better than most of us, was always able to reason matters out,
to explain difficulties, and to advise. He was a newcomer, not only to
Palestine, but also to Zionism; it took a little time before the Palestine
community came to appreciate to the full his personality and his work,
but at the end of his two years' stay he had greatly endeared himself to
the Yishtw. His departure left a large gap, and we were deeply sorry to
see him return to the outside world and to his neglected profession,
distinguished authority though we knew him to be in it.

One of the thorniest problems with which Eder had to deal, in con-
nection with the old Yishuv, rose from the following circumstances :
recruiting for the Jewish battalions was still going on in Palestine at
the time of our arrival ; our able-bodied men from the settlements had
already gone, but we were trying to provide reserves, and this entailed
an appeal to the old Yishuv, We asked them either to join the army or,
if they could not do that, to try and replace the men who had enlisted
from the colonies. There were of course relatively few young men
among the Challukkah Jews, and most of those few were either physi-
cally unfit for the army or had conscientious objections. About a hundred
of them, however, agreed to go to the settlements to do agricultural
work.

Well then, we made arrangements with the farmers who were to
employ them to provide them with strictly kosher food, and with trans-
portation back to Jerusalem every Friday afternoon before the Sabbath
set in ; for it was utterly unthinkable that, war or no war, any religious
Jew should be expected to keep the Sabbath elsewhere than in the
Holy City. They had other various needs which it was not easy to meet
in time of war, but we did our best to ensure their satisfaction. The
wages paid them were, of course, far above the meager dole they re-
ceived from charity. But neither this fact, nor our careful arrangements
to provide for their comfort and satisfy their scruples, could persuade
them to stay in the settlements for more than a very short time. It
must be admitted that they were quite unfitted for agricultural labor,
physically as well as mentally. Mostly they regarded it as a 'Vorldly"
occupation, liable to distract a man from the proper purposes of ex-
istence, which were prayer and Talmudic study. As to the financial

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

229

side of it, one of them very seriously explained to me that physical
exertion entailed the consumption of more food, as well as greater wear
and tear of clothes, so that he preferred less money and a sedentary
and pious life.

It is difficult for the Western mind to understand how completely
divorced from reality the old Yishiiv in Palestine was at that time. Its
members lived immured behind the walls of a medieval ghetto — ^but a
ghetto of their own making, and stronger than any which an enemy
could have erected around them. We did all we could to break through
to them, and knew we were not having too much success. Nevertheless,
we were rather horrified to discover how remote from them we had
remained, even toward the end of 1918, with half a year of patient work
behind us. The discovery came when Oliver Harvey, then chief censor
of Palestine, asked me to help him with the censorship of Hebrew
letters, of which he handed over a sackful. They were almost all from
the Jews of the old Yishuv to their contributors in America and other
accessible countries. Quite 90 per cent of them were devoted to com-
plaints about the hardships which the writers were enduring at the
hands of the Zionist Commission, with frequent hints of maladministra-
tion of funds. The military censors suggested that we confront the
writers — ^the majority of them well known to us — ^with these accusations,
but we decided that on the whole it was better to forward the letters,
since we were certain that the addressees were pretty familiar with
the methods of their correspondents. In this view events proved us to
have been entirely justified.

A curious incident out of that time has stayed vividly in my memory,
perhaps because it was so typical of this side of our work. It occurred
just as I was leaving Palestine for England at the end of September
1918. My train was due to pull out of Lydda in a couple of hours ; my
luggage was packed, and was being taken out to the car. I was following
it when I noticed two venerable gentlemen — ^their combined ages must
have been in the neighborhood of one hundred and eighty years — ^bear-
ing down upon me. What struck me at first, apart from their great age,
was that I had not seen them before. By this time I was under the
impression that I had met every man, woman and child in the Jewish
community of fifty thousand, most of them several times. Slowly and
with dignity they advanced to meet me, pausing to give close scrutiny
to the car, the luggage and the other indications of departure. Then
they turned to me and said: “But you are not really going away? You
can’t go yet. There are still some matters of importance to be settled
here.”

I was only too conscious that there were matters of importance still
unsettled — ^many of them to remain so for many years — ^but I did not

230

TRIAL AND ERROR

at once grasp what was meant. Sensing my ignorance, the elder of the
two gentlemen proceeded to enlighten me :

“Do you not know that the Feast of Tabernacles is almost upon us,
and we have no myrtles (At the Feast of Tabernacles certain prayers
are said by orthodox Jews while they hold a palm branch adorned with
myrtles in one hand and an ethrog, or citron, in the other.)

Though I was familiar enough with the need for myrtles at Sukkoth,
it had somehow slipped my mind, and it had not occurred to me to
include this particular job among the many chores of the Zionist Com-
mission, operating in the midst of a bloody war.

A little startled, I said: “Surely you can get myrtles from Egypt.’^

My friends looked pained. “For the Feast of Tabernacles,^' one of
them answered, reproachfully, ^^one must have myrtles of the finest
quality. These come from Trieste. In a matter of high religious impor-
tance, surely General Allenby will be willing to send instructions to
Trieste for the shipment of myrtles."

I explained carefully that there was a war on, and that Trieste was
in enemy territory.

“Yes, they say there is a war," replied one of the old gentlemen.
“But this is a purely religious matter— a matter of peace. Myrtles are,
indeed, the very symbol of peace. ..."

The conversation showed every sign of prolonging itself indefinitely ;
I thought of my train from Lydda— the only one that day— and steeled
myself to firmness. “You will have to make do," I said, “with Egyptian
myrtles."

At this stage my interlocutors brought out their trump card. “But
there is a quarantine imposed on the importation of plants from Egypt ;
the military authorities do not permit it."

We seemed to have reached a deadlock. I had to go, and with some
misgivings handed the two Rabbis over to my colleagues, assuring them
with my parting breath as I climbed into the car that every possible
effort would be made to secure the myrtle supply in time for Tabernacles,
by some means or other. (By what means I would have been hard put
to it to explain.)

I traveled down to Egypt genuinely worried over this question of
myrtles and the quarantine ; and even more worried by the responsibility
for some thousands of people living, like these two old gentlemen, in a
world of their own so remote from ours that they seemed as unreal to
us as the war did to them. By the time I fell asleep in the train I was
no longer sure what was, in fact, real, the war or the Feast of Taber-
nacles.

The business of renewing contacts in Cairo — ^there were many of
them — drove the myrtles from my mind. But when I went to take
leave of General Allenby just before my boat sailed, and we had finished

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 231

our business talk, he suddenly said : “By the way, about those myrtles 1 ”
He pulled a letter out of his pocket, glanced at it, and added: “You
know, it is an important business ; it’s all in the Bible ; I read it up in
the Book of Nehemiah last night. Well, you’ll be glad to hear that we
have lifted the quarantine, and a consignment of myrtles will get to
Palestine in good time for the Feast of Tabernacles !”

CHAPTER 21

The Zionist Commission
The Positive Side

King Feisal, Leader of the Arabs — The Journey to Akaba with
Ormsby-Gore — Circumnavigating the Sinai Peninsula — Echoes
of Exodus — FeisaVs Friendliness — Lawrence of Arabia — Re-
turn to Palestine to Lay Foundation Stones of Hebrew Uni-
versity — An Act of Faith in the Midst of War — Return to
London — Luncheon with Lloyd George, November ii, ipiS.

Xwo achievements may, I think, be written down to the credit of
the Zionist Commission of 1918. They were of very different orders;
the first was in the political field, the second in the spiritual; the first
has been almost forgotten — ^though the day will come when its signifi-
cance will be revived — ^the second has gathered volume and importance
with the passing years. They were: the understanding reached with
King Feisal and the laying of the foundation stones of the Hebrew
University.

It was in June 1918, some three months after our arrival, that the
Commander in Chief suggested that we attempt to approach King
Feisal for at least a tentative agreement on the Zionist program. Feisal
was, in Allenby's opinion, as in that of most informed people, the
only representative Arab whose influence was of more than local im-
portance. By virtue of his personal qualities, and of his position as
Commander in Chief of the Arab Army, he carried great weight in
Arabia — then in revolt against the Turks — and with the British author-
ities. We fell in readily with this suggestion, which seemed to us to be
a real sign of Allenby's desire to pave the way for future good relations
between ourselves and the Arab world; coming from the head of the
British in Palestine it did something to compensate us for the difficulties
we encountered with his subordinates.

It was accordingly arranged that I set out with Major Ormsby-Gore
for Akaba, and proceed thence up the Wady Araba into Trans- Jordan.
The Turks still held the Jordan Valley; the only way to reach Feisal’ s
headquarters was to go down by rail to Suez, thence by boat to Akaba,

232

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION

^33

circumnavigating the Sinai Peninsula, and from Akaba northward to
Amman by such means of locomotion as might offer themselves. Thus
the journey which today can be made in a couple of hours by car from
Jerusalem took upward of ten days, and in the heat of June it was no
pleasure jaunt.

The boat which took us through Suez and the Gulf of Akaba was a
small, grimy, neglected vessel in which some of our fellow-passengers
professed to recognize the former yacht of the German Embassy in
Constantinople. But we found it difficult to accept this story; it seemed
incredible that any ship could, in four short years, have accumulated so
many coats of filth and such a variety of vermin. She w^as manned by a
Greek crew, and the six days we spent aboard her seemed the longer
for the insecurity which was added to our discomfort. The heat was
unbearable; food, clothes, sheets, everything one touclied was covered,
permeated with fine dust particles, clouds of which blew across our
decks from the shores. The bathroom was long since hors de combat,
and we devised what substitutes we could.

Whether from the bad food, the intense heat or the vermin, Major
Ormsby-Gore fell ill with dysentery before we reached Akaba, and I
was only too thankful to get him ashore there and into the care of a
British doctor. He was not fit to continue the journey, and reluctantly
we decided that I had better go on alone. Hubert Young was encamped
at Akaba and he made the arrangements for the next stage, providing
me with a British officer and an Arab guide. We set off by car up the
Wady Musa — on that day not easily distinguishable from the ‘Turning
fiery furnace’’ of the Bible. There was no trace of vegetation, no shade,
no water, no village wherein to rest; only the mountains of Sinai on
the horizon, bounding a wilderness of burning rock and sand. The car
stood it for perhaps three hours and then gave up. We continued on
camels, and finally on foot, till we reached the RAF station at the foot
of the so-called Negev mountain, where we found hospitality and good
friends to give us shelter for the night. They sent us off the next morn-
ing with a fresh car and an English driver, who was to take us up the
mountain by a rough and ready track made for army lorries. The car
made about half the slope when it too gave up, and we again continued
on foot to the top of the Trans- Jordan plateau, feeling by now extremely
tired and rather sorry for ourselves.

But on the top of the plateau we were in a different world. A fresh
breeze replaced the sultry heat of the lower slopes; the countryside,
though already parched in places, showed many pleasant green stretches
threaded with brooks and rivulets ; one or two villages were surrounded
with trees and bushes. A British camp crowned the hilltop, and from
this we obtained a third car. A metaled road continued forward, and
in a few hours we were in sight of the headquarters of the Arab Army.

2M

TRIAL AND ERROR

There came out to meet us Arab officers on camels, bearing gifts of
water and fruit, with greetings from the Emir Feisal bidding us wel-
come to his camp. Qn reaching GHQ I was received by Colonel Joyce,
who advised me to take a good rest and not to attempt to see the Emir
until the next day. So that evening found me wandering about the camp.
It was a brilliant moonlit night — Palestinian moonlight — and I looked
down from Moab on the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea and the
Judean hills beyond. I may have been a little lightheaded from the
sudden change of climate, but as I stood there I suddenly had the feel-
ing that three thousand years had vanished, had become as nothing.
Here I was, on the identical ground, on the identical errand, of my
ancestors in the dawn of my people's history, when they came to nego-
tiate with the ruler of the country for a right of way, that they might
return to their home, . . . Dream or vision or hallucination, I was
suddenly recalled from it to present-day realities by the gruff voice of
a British sentry : ^'Sorry, sir, Pm afraid you're out of bounds.”

My talk with the Emir took place the following morning. I found
him surrounded by his warriors, a forbidding-looking band engaged,
when I arrived, in performing some sort of fantasia. Among them
moved T. E. Lawrence, famous afterward as '‘Lawrence of Arabia,”
chatting to various chiefs, and probably making arrangements for the
night, when they would go forth on their destructive mission to blow
up a few kilometers more of the Hedjaz Railroad, To my astonishment
I saw English gold sovereigns — already a rarity to most of us — ^being
distributed, and then I remembered the several heavy cases which had
traveled with us, under strong guard, on our boat through the Red Sea.

I spent half an hour or so watching the army exercises, and was then
invited to follow the Emir into his tent, where I was offered tea — in-
stead of the inevitable coffee. There was little difference, either in
consistency or flavor, both being nothing more than highly concentrated
sugar solutions.

With the help of an interpreter we carried on a fairly lengthy and
detailed conversation. After the usual exchange of politenesses, I ex-
plained to him the mission on which I had come to Palestine, our
desire to do everything in our power to allay Arab fears and suscepti-
bilities, and our hope that he would lend us his powerful moral support.
He asked me a great many questions about the Zionist program, and I
found him by no means uninformed. At this time, it must be remem-
bered, Palestine and Trans- Jordan were one and the same thing, and
I stressed the fact that there was a great deal of room in the country
if intensive development were applied, and that the lot of the Arabs
would be greatly improved through our work there With all this I
found the Emir in full agreement, as Lawrence later confirmed to me
by letter.

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 235

The war was at that time — ^June 1918 — still at a critical stage. One
could perhaps have said that the whole conversation seemed to the
Emir rather less than real; one could have added that he was only
indulging in the elaborate Arab courtesy of which I have already spoken.
Time was to prove that this was not the case, and in the sequel the
reader will find ample evidence that the Emir was in earnest when he
said that he was eager to see the Jews and Arabs working in harmony
during the Peace Conference which was to come, and that in his view
the destiny of the two peoples was linked with the Middle East and
must depend on the good will of the Great Powers.

Our conversation lasted over two hours, and before I left he sug-
gested that we be photographed together. Occasionally, during our
talk, he fell into French; he did not speak it fluently, but could make
himself understood quite well, and this to some extent relieved the strain
of a long conversation through an interpreter.

The Emir promised to communicate the gist of our talk to his father,
the Sherif Hussein, who was, he said, the ultimate judge of all his
actions, and carried the responsibility for Arab policy. From subsequent
events it was clear that his father raised no objections to the views ex-
pressed to me by his son.

This first meeting in the desert laid the foundations of a lifelong
friendship. I met the Emir several times afterward in Europe, and our
negotiations crystallized into an agreement, drawn up by Colonel
Lawrence and signed by the Emir and myself, which has been published
several times, both in British and in French diplomatic papers. Thus
the leader of the Arab world against Turkey, who by his leadership
initiated a new period of Arab revival, came to a complete understand-
ing with us, and would no doubt have carried this understanding into
effect if his destiny had shaped^ as we at that time expected it would.
Unfortunately, for reasons beyond his control, he was unable to realize
his ambitions ; he did not unite the Arab world, but was forced out of
Syria and given the throne of Iraq. Then followed the rise of Ibn Saud,
and the practical annihilation of the Hashimite family. Arab unity re-
ceded once more into an unfulfilled dream.

I anticipate part of my narrative to say that this circumstance re-
flected most unfavorably on our relations with the Arabs, since among
the many difficulties facing us in this field perhaps the paramount
trouble is the lack of any single personality or group of personalities
capable of representing the Arab world and of speaking on its behalf.
It will be seen, when I come to tell of the Paris Peace Conference,
during which Feisal was the recognized spokesman of the Arab world,
that the understanding reached with him was a matter of^ great impor-
tance. Events — ^and politicians — ^have conspired to push it into the back-
ground, but fundamental realities — ^and I hold the ultimate identity of

236 TRIAL AND ERROR

Arab and Jewish interests to be a fundamental reality — ^have a way of
reasserting themselves, and this one, I believe, will someday be recog-
nized again for what it is.

I would like at this point to pay tribute to the services which T. E.
Lawrence rendered our cause, and to add something regarding his
remarkable personality. I had met Lawrence fieetingly in Egypt, with
Allenby, and later in Palestine. I was to meet with him quite often
later, and he was an occasional visitor to our house in London. His
relationship to the Zionist movement was a very positive one, in spite
of the fact that he was strongly pro- Arab, and he has mistakenly been
represented as anti-Zionist. It was his view — as it was Feisahs — ^that
the Jews would be of great help to the Arabs, and that the Arab world
stood to gain much from a Jewish Homeland in Palestine.

His personality was complex and difficult. He was profoundly shy;
his manner was whimsical, and it was difficult to get him to talk
seriously. He was much given to the Oxford type of sardonic humor.
But when one did manage to get him into a serious vein, he was frank
and friendly, and his opinions, especially regarding the affairs of the
Near East, were really worth having.

The second entry on the credit side of the Zionist Commission may
have looked much less impressive at the time; no one today denies its
value. Before leaving London I had secured from Mr. Balfour his
consent in principle to our trying to lay the foundation stones of the
Hebrew University on the plot of land acquired for that purpose on
Mount Scopus — subject, of course, to the consent of the military author-
ities on the spot. In May 1918, we approached General Allenby on the
subject and found him at first — not surprisingly, perhaps — ^very much
taken aback. He exclaimed : “But we may be rolled back any minute !
What is the gocfd of beginning something you may never be able to
finish My reply was : “This will be a great act of faith — ^faith in the
victory which is bound to come, and faith in the future of Palestine. I
can think of no better symbol of faith than the founding of the Hebrew
University, under your auspices, and in this hour.” He was not unim-
pressed, but he repeated: “You have chosen almost the worst possible
time. The war in the West is passing through a. most critical phase;
the Germans are almost at the gates of Paris.” I said: “We shall win
this war. The present crisis is only one episode.” In the end Allenby
agreed to send a telegram to the Foreign Office asking for advice, and
after a short interval received an affirmative reply.

And so, in July 1918, a modest but memorable ceremony took’ place.
On the afternoon of the twenty-fourth the foundation stones of the
Hebrew University were laid on Mount Scopus, in the presence of
General Allenby and his staff, of representatives of the Allied armies

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 237

co-operating with him, of Moslem, Christian and Jewish dignitaries
from Jerusalem, and of representatives of the Yishm.

The physical setting of the ceremony was of unforgettable and sublime
beauty. The declining sun flooded the hills of Judea and Moab with
golden light, and it seemed to me, too, that the transfigured heights
were watching, wondering, dimly aware perhaps that this was the
beginning of the return of their own people after many days. Below
us lay Jerusalem, gleaming like a jewel.

We were practically within sound of the guns on the northern front,
and I spoke briefly, contrasting the desolation which the war was
bringing with the creative significance of the act on which we were
engaged; recalling, too, that only a week before we had observed the
Fast of the Ninth of Ab, the day on which the Temple was destroyed
and Jewish national political existence extinguished — apparently for-
ever. We were there to plant the germ of a new Jewish life. And then
I spoke of our hopes for the University — ^hopes which at that moment
seemed as remote as the catastrophe of the Roman conquest, but which
today — in 1947 — are in process of realization.

The ceremony did not last longer than an hour. When it was over
we sang Hatikvah and God Save the King. But no one seemed anxious
to leave, and we stood silent, with bowed heads, round the little row
of stones, while the twilight deepened into night.

What we — my friends of the Hebrew University Committee and I —
felt at the time was best expressed in a letter which I received some
weeks later from Achad Ha-am, who had encouraged us, in our student
days in Switzerland, when we first mooted the idea of a Hebrew Uni-
versity in Palestine nearly two decades before the Balfour Declaration
was dreamed of.

London
I2th August, 1918.

My Dear Weizmann,

... I feel it my duty to express to you my deep satisfaction and
heartfelt joy on the occasion of this historical event. I know that, owing
to present conditions the erection of the building will have to be post-
poned, so that for a long time — ^heaven knows how long — ^the laying of
the foundation stones will remain an isolated episode without practical
consequences. Nevertheless I consider it a great historical event. . . •
Since the beginning of our national movement in connection with the
colonization of Palestine we have always felt, some of us unconsciously,
that the reconstruction is possible only on spiritual foundations, and
that the laying of these foundations must be taken in hand simultane-
ously with the colonization work itself. In the first embryonic period
when the whole work in Palestine was still of very small dimensions.

TRIAL AND ERROR

238

and in a very precarious condition, the spiritual effort was concentrated
in the then very popular Hebrew school in Jaffa, which was as poor
and unstable as the colonization itself. In the following period, the
colonization work having been enlarged and improved, the need for
laying spiritual foundations made itself felt more vividly, and found its
expression in the ''Hebrew Gymnasium’' at Jaffa — an institution in-
comparably superior to its predecessor. Now we stand before a new
period of our national work in Palestine, and soon we may be faced
with problems and possibilities of overwhelming magnitude. We do
not know what the future has in store for us, but this we do know : that
the brighter the prospects for the re-establishment of our national home
in Palestine, the more the need for laying the spiritual foundations of
that home on a corresponding scale, which can only be conceived in the
form of a Hebrew University. By this I mean — and so, I am sure, do
you — not a mere imitation of a European University, only with Hebrew
as the dominant language, but a University which, from the very begin-
ning, will endeavor to become the true embodiment of the Hebrew
spirit of old, and to shake off the mental and moral servitude to which
our people has been so long subjected in the Diaspora. Only so can
we be justified in our ambitious hopes as to the future influence of the
"Teaching” that "will go forth out of Zion.”

It became clear to me soon afterward that there was little practical
work which the Commission could do in Palestine for the time being.
The country was under military administration, the army was prepar-
ing for another push, and underneath it all I had the feeling that the
war was working up to its crisis and that I ought to get back to London
to report. When I consulted Allenby, I found him of the same opinion ;
he added that it might possibly be of use, politically, if I were in fact
to give it out that I was leaving Palestine as a result of my disappoint-
ment at not being able to do anything constructive while the military
fate of the country remained undecided. He wished me good luck and
a speedy return.

In October 1918, I found myself in London again, reporting to the
authorities, and to English and American Zionist friends, on our work
in Palestine and our hopes and fears for the future. I informed the
Prime Minister, Mr. Lloyd George, of my return, and was invited to
lunch with him on November ii. The date naturally had no particular
significance for anyone at that time. When the day came, and with it the
news of the armistice, I assumed that the lunch would be off, since it
was pretty obvious that Mr. Lloyd George would have much more
important things to attend to. So I telephoned his secretary, Philip
Kerr (later Lord Lothian), and asked whether I was still expected. I
was surprised and delighted to receive an affirmative reply, and still
more so to be told that we would be alone.

THE ZIONIST COMMISSION 239

The problem was then how to make my way to Number Ten Down-
ing Street. The streets were packed with joyous crowds, it seemed
impossible to reach an assigned place, and least of all the Prime Minis-
ter’s residence. However, I set off from our house on Addison Road
at midday, allowing myself plenty of time to walk, for I could expect
no conveyance. By about one-thirty (the hour of my appointment), I
was in Green Park, just outside the little iron gate that leads into
Downing Street. So were a great many other people. The gate was
closely guarded by several policemen. Timidly I approached one of
those on our side with a request to be let through, which was of course
promptly refused. ‘Tut,” said I, ‘T have an appointment with the
Prime Minister for lunch.” The policeman looked at me. “So several
other people have already informed me,” he remarked dryly. I then
produced a visiting card, and asked if he would show it to his colleague
on the inside of the gate, who might then inquire from the porter at
Number Ten whether I was telling the truth. After some hesitation he
agreed to do this, and in a few minutes returned all smiles to let me
through.

I found the Prime Minister reading the Psalms ; he was moved to the
depths of his soul and was, indeed, near to tears. The first thing he
said to me was: “We have just sent off seven trains full of bread and
other essential food, to be distributed b}’- Plumer in Cologne.”

When at length we settled down to lunch, I had my opportunity of
reporting on events in Palestine, But it was a hurried and confused
visit ; I was conscious of the Prime Minister’s preoccupation with other
matters, and felt that I must take up as little of his time, and even of
his attention, as I could. At three o’clock he had to be at a Thanks-
giving service in the Abbey, and at a quarter' to the hour I watched him
emerge from the door. of Number Ten, to be overwhelmed immediately
by a cheering crowd and borne, shoulder high, from my view.

CHAPTER 22

Postwar

•

Dislocations — Russian Jewry Eliminated as Zionist Factor —
American Jewry as the Hope — Zionist Illusions — Preparing
for the Peace Conference — Appearing Before the Council of
Ten — Sylvain Levi's Attempt to Betray Us — Feisal's Letter to
Felix Frankfurter — The W eismann-F eisal Agreement — Why
the Agreement Lapsed — Frankfurter's Personality — Stephen
S. Wise — Louis D, Brandeis — His Character and His Views
on Zionism — Clash Impending — Return to Palestine — The
First Chalutzim,

i HE end of the war brought such fundamental changes in the
structure of the world — and more particularly of the Jewish world —
that for a while we could see little but the external difficulties which
towered in our path. By comparison with the cataclysms of the Second
World War the changes wrought by the First in the condition of the
Jewish people may seem to have been of manageable proportions. But
they were profound enough, and in their time unprecedented. It was
some months before we could draw breath again, achieve some sort of
general view, and decide where lay our best prospects.

The very conditions which had brought about the Balfour Declara-
tion had also been responsible for a disastrous weakening of the Jewish
people as a whole. There was also the separate German peace with
Russia and the Bolshevik revolution, which had virtually eliminated
Russian Jewry as a factor to be reckoned with in our reconstruction
plans. Between the Balfour Declaration and the accession of the Bolshe-
viks to power, Russian Jewry had subscribed the then enormous sum of
thirty million rubles for an agricultural bank in Palestine ; but this, with
much else, had now to be written off ; and though a few refugees, mostly
orphans, did eventually trickle through to Palestine (where some of
them were settled with money from South Africa at Kfar Noar), they
were too few to make an impression on the country. Polish Jewry had
suffered so severely in the general war, with the backward and forward
movement of armies, and was still suffering so much in the separate
Russo-Polish War, that it was incapable of making any appreciable

240

POSTWAR

241

contribution to the tasks which lay ahead of us. So our eyes turned
westward to the one great Jewish community which had remained
intact, though we knew that the American Jews were by no means as
deeply permeated with the Zionist ideal as the European.

In the first few months after the war the world at large, and the
Jews perhaps more than the rest, lacked everything: food, gold, clothes,
shelter, medicine. It was swept by epidemics, which in some areas deci-
mated the populations. Even in well-organized and relatively wealthy
States the work of reconstruction presented an enormous problem. How
much more difficult was it for us, a small and scattered people, without
a country, without a government, without executive powers, without
forces, without funds. And we had to begin our colonization work in
an old exhausted country, with a small Jewish populatigji whose social
stratification up to that time had made them, to say the least, unsuited
to such a task.

Then there were problems which arose within our own ranks as a
result of a failure to understand the external problems. In Palestine
itself our political difficulties were increasing rather than diminishing
as the months went by ; but the Continental Zionists were for the large
part under the illusion that all political problems had been solved by
the issue of the Balfour Declaration! My own experience in Palestine
during 1918, and my contacts with the British military authorities and
the Arabs had taught me one hard lesson, namely, that we stood only
on the threshold of our work, politically and in every other way. What
struck me as curious was that the American Zionists, under Justice
Brandeis, though fully aware of what was going on in England and in
Palestine, nonetheless shared the illusions of our Continental friends;
they too assumed that all political problems had been settled once and
for all, and that the only important task before Zionists was the economic
upbuilding of the Jewish National Home.

It was a misunderstanding which, as I shall relate, was to haunt us
for many years and to have serious consequences for the movement ; it
was to produce dangerous internal tensions, and to affect the whole
course of Zionist history. It began to manifest itself at the very first
postwar meeting of the Zionist Actions Committee (General Council),
which took place in London in February 1919. To me fell the thankless
task of explaining the realities of the situation to my Zionist friends
from the Continent — an American delegation arrived later, for the
June meeting — some of whom had come to the meeting with ready
prepared lists of names for the '"Cabinet” which, they assumed, would
soon be elected in Jerusalem! Brought down to earth by the cold facts,
they could not conceal their disappointment; some of them went at
once to the other extreme, and concluded that the Balfour Declaration
was a meaningless document. It was my job — ^then and for many years

TRIAL AND ERROR

242

after, and in many places — ^to preach the hard doctrine that the Balfour
Declaration was no more than a framework, which had to be filled in
by our own efforts. It would mean exactly what we would make it
mean — ^neither more nor less. On what we could make it mean, through
slow, costly and laborious work, would depend whether, and when we
should deserve or attain statehood.

Twelve years later, and speaking of the League of Nations Mandate
in which the Balfour Declaration was incorporated, I still had to tell a
Zionist Congress : ‘Tike all people and groups without the tradition of
political responsibility, the Jews are apt to see in the printed text of a
document the sole and sufficient guarantee of political rights. Some of
them have clung fanatically to the letter of the Mandate and have failed
to understand its spirit. Practical politics, like mechanics, are governed
by one golden rule : you can only get out of things what you put into
them.” If such admonitions were necessary — as indeed they were — after
more than a decade of practical experience, how much more so were they
at the very outset of the work! At that small gathering in 1919 I found
myself face to face with a highly critical opposition. Alas, I understood
them far better than they understood me. They felt the threat of pogroms
hanging low over their countries, and they yearned for a sure refuge. The
Balfour Declaration had seemed to promise them that, and to some of
them the arguments which I conceived to be so reasonable must have
sounded like bitter mockery of their cherished hopes. I should have felt
their criticism less deeply if I had not understood the impulses behind it,
if the intensity of the feelings expressed had not been for me an indication
of the stark tragedy which even then — this was 19 19, not 1945 — ^liad
overwhelmed the Eastern European Jewish communities — a tragedy
which the Zionist movement was at the moment powerless to relieve.
Some of the critics, too, were close personal friends of my youth.

It was in this atmosphere that we had to make a modest beginning,
accepting the hard facts and fortified by the conviction that this small
start would grow and blossom into something not unworthy of our age-
long hopes. The first thing was to reorganize and strengthen the Zionist
Commission in Jerusalem. Then we had to make the Home Government
understand just what the peculiarly hostile attitude of the administration
on the spot meant to us, and ask that measures be taken to remedy the
situation. Telegrams were in fact sent to Palestine from the Home
Government, indicating in no uncertain terms that the Balfour Declara-
tion )vas the considered policy of His Majesty’s Government, and the
gist of these telegrams was communicated both to Jews and Arabs by the
military authorities, Palestine being still under military occupation. But
the comments attached to them by Sir Ronald Storrs, Military Governor
of Jerusalem, and others, were such as to deprive them of most of their
effect.

POSTWAR

243

We were engaged, also, in the preparation of our case for the Peace
Conference then sitting in Paris. A preliminary draft had been produced
by an advisory committee under Sir Herbert Samuel, with Maynard
Keynes, Lionel Abrahams and James de Rothschild as members. Simon
Marks took this draft to Paris to consult with Ormsby-Gore on it, and
returned, as I recall, rather crestfallen: Ormsby-Gore had given him
some kindly but unpalatable advice about “coming down to earth,.'’ ^
“adjusting oneself,’’ “revising one’s ideas,” and so on. All the same, the
draft which Ormsby-Gore had considered so fanciful formed the sub-
stantial basis of the statement which we eventually submitted to the
Conference on February 23, 1919.

The summons to Paris came while the Actions Committee was still
in session, and I left them to continue their deliberations while I joined
Mr. Sokolow and the other members of our delegation in Paris, where
we were to appear before the Council of Ten of the Peace Conference:
the council included Balfour and Lord Milner for Great Britain, Tardieu
and Pichon for France, Lansing and White for America, Baron Sonnino
for Italy. Clemenceau was present during the early part of the session.
The scene is still vivid in my memory, but for the account I make use of
the report which I gave my colleagues of the Actions Committee on my
return to London on March 5.

We were admitted to the Conference chamber at three-thirty on
Thursday afternoon, February 23. Mr. Sokolow delivered a very short,
concise speech upon the first point, namely, the historic claim of the
Jewish people to Palestine, and referred to the favorable declarations
which had been made by the various governments on this subject. He
described the immemorial attachment of the Jewish people to Eretz
Israel, and explained how local Jewish questions, in whatever countries,
really turned upon Palestine: on these grounds, he continued, we de-
manded the foundation of a Jewish National Home in Palestine. From
where I stood I could see Sokolow’s face, and, without being sentimental,
it was as if two thousand years of Jewish suffering rested on his
shoulders. His quiet, dignified utterance made a very deep impression
on the assembly.

After him I dealt with the economic position of the Jewish people.
I pointed out that as a group the Jews had been hit harder by the war
than any other; Jewry and Judaism were in a frightfully weakened
condition, presenting, to themselves and to the nations, a problem very
difficult of solution. There was, I said, no hope at all of such a solution —
since the Jewish problem revolved fundamentally round the homelessness
of the Jewish people — ^without the creation of a National Home. The
third and fourth speakers — ^five had been allotted to us — ^were Ussishkin,
who spoke in Hebrew, and Andre Spire, who spoke French. The last
was Sylvain Levi. His speech might be divided into two parts. In the

244 TRIAL AND ERROR

first he soared to heaven, in the second he came down plumb to earth.
He began by describing the foundation of the Jewish colonies in Palestine,
the development of Hebrew, the work of the Choveve Zion, Baron de
Rothschild and the Alliance Israelite; he declared that the work of the
Zionists was of great significance from the moral point of view : it had
uplifted the Jewish masses and oriented them to Palestine. The second
part of his speech raised three points : one, that Palestine was a small
and poor land, that it already had a population of six hundred thousand
Arabs, that the Jews had a higher standard of life than the Arabs and
would tend to dispossess them. Two, that the Jews who would go to
Palestine would be mainly Russian Jews, who were of explosive
tendencies. Three, that the creation of a Jewish National Horne in
Palestine would introduce the dangerous principle of Jewish dual rights,
and this was of especial importance to France as the principal Mediter-
ranean Power.

When M. Levi ended his speech the rest of us felt profoundly em-
barrassed; it was not that he had made any great impression on the
Conference; it was rather that the astoundingly unexpected character
of his utterance — ^it was not for this purpose that he had been^ invited as
a Jewish representative — constituted a chillul ha-shem, a public desecra-
tion. We held a short consultation among ourselves. Each of us had
spoken for five or six minutes, M. Levi had taken twenty, about as
much as the rest of us put together. If we asked permission to refute
his arguments we should change the proceedings into a debate between
M. Levi and ourselves — an exceedingly undignified spectacle.

Something in the nature of a miracle came to resolve our dilemma.
Mr. Lansing, the American Secretary of State, called me over and
asked me; “What do you mean by a Jewish National Home?” That
opened the door to us, and Mr. Lansing’s intervention rendered us a very
great service. I defined the Jewish National Home to mean the creation
of an administration which would arise out of the natural conditions of
the country — ^always safeguarding the interests of non-Jews — ^with the
hope that by Jewish immigration Palestine would ultimately become as
Jewish as England is English. I asked Mr. Lansing whether I had made
my point clear, and he replied : “Absolutely !” I then dealt with M. Levi’s
remarks, and said that the Zionist task was indeed a difficult one, but it
was not more so than the present condition of the Jewish people; the
question was not whether Zionism was difficult, but whether it was
possible. I gave a brief technical exposition of the point, and took as
my example the outstanding success which the French had at that time
made of Tunisia. What the French could do in Tunisia, I said, the Jews
would be able to do in Palestine, with Jewish will, Jewish money, Jewish
power and Jewish enthusiasm. As far as the question of double allegiance
was concerned, there was nothing in our proposals which raised that

POSTWAR

^45

principle. There were a few Jews who had qualms in this matter, but
they were less than 5 per cent of the Jewish people. It was true that the
Russian Jews had lived in an excitable atmosphere, but they were not
responsible for that, and the very work which M. Levi had praised in the
first part of his speech had been done by Russian Jews. Mr. Balfour
afterward described my speech as “the swish of a sword.'’

The proceedings ended with this, and we withdrew. Mr. Balfour sent
out his secretary to congratulate us upon our success. As we came out
of the Conference precincts M. Levi came up to me and held out his
hand. Instinctively I withdrew my own and said : “You have sought to
betray us." He got the same response from Sokolow.

That was the last time I saw Sylvain Levi. We had known of course
that he was no Zionist, but his behavior in Palestine had been correct
enough, and he gave us no hint of the attitude he would take up at the
Peace Conference. Until this day I am at a loss to understand why
Baron Edmond de Rothschild, a good Zionist, should have supported
his candidacy for membership in the delegation ; he may have felt that
some voice should be heard besides the official one of the Zionists — and
quite possibly he had no inkling of the extraordinary performance M.
Levi was going to put up.

We got quite a good press in France — except for the Journal des
debats. The evening of the hearing M. Tardieu, French representative
on the Council of Ten, issued an official statement, saying that France
would not oppose the placing of Palestine under British trusteeship, and
the formation of a Jewish State. The use of the words “Jewish State"
was significant; we ourselves had refrained from using them. The only
disturbing public note was a rather surprising interview with the Emir
Feisal which appeared in the Matin and was frankly hostile. Feisal's
secretary promptly disavowed it, and a meeting was arranged between
the Emir and Mr. (now Justice) Felix Frankfurter, who was a mem-
ber of the American Zionist deputation, with Lawrence of Arabia pres-
ent. In a few days the Emir addressed to Mr. Frankfurter the following
letter :

Hedjaz Delegation
Paris

March 3, 1919.

Dear Mr. Frankfurter:

I want to take this opportunity of my first contact with American
Zionists, to tell you what I have often been able to say to Dr. Weizmann
in Arabia and Europe.

We feel that the Arabs and Jews are cousins in race, suffering similar
oppressions at the hands of powers stronger than themselves, and by a

246 TRIAL AND ERROR

happy coincidence have been able to take the first step toward the attain-
ment of their national ideals together.

We Arabs, especially the educated among us, look with the deepest
sympathy on the Zionist movement. Our deputation here in Paris is fully
acquainted with the proposals submitted by the Zionist Organization to
the Peace Conference, and we regard them as moderate and proper.
We will do our best, in so far as we are concerned, to help them through ;
we will wish the Jews a most hearty welcome home.

With the chiefs of your movement, especially with Dr. Weizmann, we
have had, and continue to have, the closest relations. He has been a great
helper of our cause, and I hope the Arabs may soon be in a position to
make the Jews some return for their kindness. We are working together
for a reformed and revived Near East, and our two movements complete
one another. The Jewish movement is national and not imperialistic.
Our movement is national and not imperialistic ; and there is room in
Syria for us both. Indeed, I think that neither can be a real success with-
out the other.

People less informed and less responsible than our leaders, ignoring
the need for co-operation of the Arabs and the Zionists, have been trying
to exploit the local differences that must necessarily arise in Palestine in
the early stages of our movements. Some of them have, I am afraid, mis-
represented your aims to the Arab peasantry, and our aims to the Jewish
peasantry, with the result that interested parties have been able to make
capital out of what they call our differences.

I wish to give you my firm conviction that these differences are not on
questions of principle, but on matters of detail, such as must inevitably
occur in every contact with neighboring peoples, and as are easily dis-
sipated by mutual good will. Indeed, nearly all of them will disappear
with fuller knowledge.

I look forward, and my people with me look forward, to a future in
which we will help you and you will help us, so that the countries in
which we are mutually interested may once again take their place in the
community of civilized peoples of the world.

Yours sincerely,
Feisal

This remarkable letter should be of interest to the critics who have
accused us of beginning our Zionist work in Palestine without ever con-
sulting the wishes or welfare of the Arab world. It must be borne in
mind that the views here expressed by the then acknowledged leader of
the Arabs, the bearer of their hopes, were the culmination of several dis-
cussions. Of equal interest to the critics should be the agreement into
which Feisal, as head of the Arab delegation, entered direct with me, on
January 3 of that year, before we were called before the Peace Confer-

POSTWAR

247

ence, and I think it is proper to say that the existence of that agreement
had much to do with the positive attitude toward Zionist aspirations of
the Big Four. I quote only paragraphs three and four of that agreement :

In the establishment of the Constitution and Administration of
Palestine, all such measures shall be adopted as will afford the fullest
guarantees for carrying into effect the British Government’s [Balfour]
Declaration of November 2nd, 1917.

All necessary measures shall be taken to encourage and stimulate
immigration of Jews into Palestine on a large scale, and as quickly as
possible to settle Jewish immigrants upon the land through closer
settlement and intensive cultivation of the soil. In taking such meas-
ures the Arab peasant and tenant farmers shall be protected in their
rights, and shall be assisted in forwarding their economic development.

Feisal added a condition to this agreement, a perfectly understandable
one as far as he was concerned : "‘If the Arabs are established as I have
asked in my manifesto of January 4 addressed to the British Secretary
of State for Foreign Affairs, I will carry out what is written in this
agreement. If changes are made, I cannot be answerable for failure to
carry out this agreement.”

Great changes indeed were made, and their results were visited upon
the heads of the Zionists. But at the time the general impression in
Paris was that our cause was won, though the details remained to be
decided. "‘Everything,” I told the Actions Committee in London, “now
depends upon ourselves.”

A second meeting of the Actions Committee was held, also in London,
four months later, in June 1919, this time with the participation of an
American delegation headed by Justice Brandeis, whom I now met for
the first time. I was, in fact, just getting to know American Jewry,
through some of its representatives. I was to learn a great deal about
it in the future — it has, in fact, been one of the major experiences of
my life.

Felix Frankfurter I first met during my mission to Gibraltar in 1917.
I had known him by reputation, and certainly was not disappointed when
I came face to face with him. He was quick, intelligent, scintillating,
many sided, in contrast to myself, who have little interest in affairs out-
side Zionism and chemistry. He was of great help to us, as we have
already seen, in the negotiations with the Emir Feisal. He also helped me
a great deal toward understanding the ways and ideas of the American
political leaders of that time. During the controversy with Justice
Brandeis, described in ensuing chapters. Frankfurter and I drifted apart
for some years, but I believe that even during this period our relations
did not deteriorate seriously, and I am happy to think that whatever
breach there was has been healed, so that there are today stronger mutual
bonds of affection and respect.

248 TRIAL AND ERROR

It is curious that though we did not have any long discussions of our
problems, and only exchanged notes on them — ^that, too, at rare inter-
vals — ^we almost always discovered an identity of view and interest.
These days it is a great joy to me to see him in Washington, enthroned
as one of the great Justices, and I never miss an opportunity of getting
in touch with him when I am in America.

Stephen S. Wise, too, was one of the great personalities whom I began
to know in those days. But of him I must remark that we found our
way to each other rather slowly. He belonged to the old school of polit-
ical Zionists, and for some reason or other we did not find a common
language for many years, though I knew him to be devoted to the ideals
of the movement and ready to give them of his best.

Wise was of great value to the movement during the time of Wil-
son, whom he had interested in our purposes about the time of the
Balfour Declaration. In later years, as the result of more frequent con-
tacts, Wise and I got nearer to each other, and a friendship developed
which was never disturbed by differences of opinion or by any other
circumstances. He has always been utterly unsparing of himself in his
devotion to the movement and remains till this day one of the significant
forces in Zionism and world Jewry.

Justice Brandeis, as I have remarked, I first met at the Actions Com-
mittee Conference in London, in June 1919. He was on his way to Pales-
tine — ^his first visit — ^and could stay in London only a couple of days. He
was accompanied by Mr. Jacob de Haas, to whom he referred as his
"'teacher in Zionism.’'

Justice Brandeis has often been compared with Abraham Lincoln, and
indeed they had much in common besides clean-chiseled features and
lofty brows. Brandeis, too, was a Puritan : upright, austere, of a scrupu-
lous honesty and implacable logic. These qualities sometimes made him
hard to work with ; like Wilson he was apt to evolve theories, based on
the highest principles, from his inner consciousness, and then expect the
facts to fit in with them. If the facts failed to oblige, so much the worse
for the facts. Indeed, the conflicts which developed between Brandeis
and ourselves were not unlike those which disturbed Wilson’s relations
with his European colleagues when he first had to work closely with
them.

De Haas, his mentor, had always shown some hostility toward my
leadership and that of my colleagues. I had had almost no personal
contacts with him before — he had lived in the States — and though I
had seen him once or twice at prewar Zionist Congresses, I did not
remember a single passage-at-arms with him. So I was forced to
ascribe his opposition to the old division, dating back to Herzl’s
time, between the “practical” and the ‘"political” Zionists. But what
was altogether curious now was the fact that De Haas now posed as

POSTWAR

H9

the ^'practical” Zionist. Like Justice Brandeis he was of the opinion
that “political Zionism” had very little more — if anything — to do.
The political chapter of the movement might therefore be considered
as closed. I pondered this phenomenon in vain, and sometimes won-
dered whether De Haas might resent the fact that a leading “practical”
Zionist, in the original sense, should have been so closely connected
with the major political achievement of the Zionist movement. Per-
haps he felt it to be utterly wrong that I should have had anything to
do with the Balfour Declaration which was obviously not my domain,
but his, as an old Herzlian Zionist. In any case, his views had already
influenced Brandeis to some extent before the Americans arrived in
London.

They found a good deal to criticize about the London office, which
was a very modest establishment. De Haas produced elaborate plans
for the upbuilding of Palestine which seemed to us both vague and
fantastic. But we knew that much would depend on our American
-:triends, and were anxious not to hurt their susceptibilities.

I tried to give Brandeis as accurate a picture of Palestine as I
could; above all, I warned him that he would find a poor, under-
populated, underdeveloped, neglected country, with a very small Jew-
ish population, ravaged by four years of war, and almost completely
cut off from the outside world. Moreover, the Palestinian Jews were
already rather disappointed by the attitude of their new masters.

Looking back now, I think it may have been uncertainty that made
Brandeis and De Haas more trenchant in their criticisms than they
otherwise might have been — ^that and the fact that they did not make
sufficient allowance for the difficult circumstances resulting from the
war.

Brandeis’ stay in Palestine did not exceed a fortnight, and could not
possibly permit a thorough survey of conditions. When he returned,
he was obliged to generalize on the basis of the scanty facts he had
been able to collect ; his views, however correct theoretically, squared
badly with realities. He was for instance definitely of the opinion that
unless a large-scale “sanitation” of the country were first undertaken,
it would be wrong to encourage immigration. He supposed that the
Government’s first act would be to drain the marshes, clear the
swamps, build new roads, not realizing that no one in authority had
the slightest intention of starting these operations. He repeatedly
stated — ^this was thirty years ago — ^that Zionist political work had
come to a close, that nothing remained but the economic task. These
views pointed to a coming conflict between Brandeis and myself, as
also between the majority of European Zionists and a powerful group
of our American friends. In America itself they were to lead to a

S50 TRIAL AND ERROR

breach within the Zionist Organization which was not to be healed
for many years.

Mr. Brandeis also made some sweeping and derogatory statements
about the few Jewish settlements he had been able to visit. They
were mostly the ^^old” settlements, since apart from Daganiah, Mer-
chaviah, Ben Shemen and Hulda there was nothing that could be
called Zionist colonization; and all the settlements, old and new,
were still scarred by the war. It seemed hardly fair to pass judgment
on them on the basis of a hurried visit in a period immediately
following a bitter war, itself following generations of Turkish occu-
pation.

It was my conviction then, as it is today after the passing of nearly
three decades, that constructive work in Palestine cannot be directed
from a distance, even by the ablest of men, on the basis of an
occasional short visit and of reports. One must not only spend
sufficient time on the spot, one must be a participant in some enter-
prise, one must have the feel of the country and of the institutions.
For this reason, among others, I returned to Palestine in the autumn
of that year, taking with me my wife, whose first visit it was.

Two queer incidents have stayed in my mind in connection with
the journey out. Traveling was still difficult in 1919, and the boat
which we eventually got at Marseilles, after a ten-day wait, was
filled chiefly with military passengers. One evening, having nothing
better to do, I bought a ticket for the ‘^pooh’ on the day^s run, and
then found myself bidding in the auction against a rather blimpish
general. I got the number. As luck would have it, my ticket won
the pool, which amounted to about a hundred pounds, and I handed
the money over to the sailors’ fund. Never was it made more clear
to me that I had no right to exist, much less to win sweeps and enjoy
the popularity — ephemeral as it is — ^that haloes the winner !

The second incident was more serious. While we were still on the
high seas, General Congreve, Acting High Commissioner in Egypt
during Allenby’s absence, was informed that a Zionist by the name
of Weizmann would shortly be arriving in Alexandria, and as his
coming would certainly make trouble, he had better not be permitted
to land. My old friend Colonel Meinertzhagen was political officer
in Egypt at the time, and it was from him that we learned all the
details of the affair. Meinertzhagen got wind of Congreve’s intentions
and made strong representations to his superior officer that things
were not quite like that : in fact I was traveling with the knowledge,
and indeed at the request, of high British authorities, and Zionism
was a part of British policy. I was carrying with me letters from
Allenby and Lloyd George. But Congreve stuck to his guns; he said
he knew nothing about Zionism and cared less, and had never heard of

POSTWAR

251

me. Meinertzhagen took the drastic step of cabling London over the
head of Congreve — for which the General immediately ordered him
home — and it took direct orders from the Foreign Office and the War
Office to dissuade the General from turning us back. When we arrived
in Alexandria he called on us at our hotel, primarily, I thought, to
make it clear that whatever bees the high-ups might have in their
bonnets, he at least, was not to be taken in. But after this visit,
during which he became most affable, he invited us to lunch at the
Residency.

We stayed in Jerusalem with David Eder, who was now established
in a home of his own. After making contact with the Jerusalem office,
now reinforced — as a result of the Actions Committee’s decisions —
by the addition of Mr. Ussishkin, Mr. Robert Szold and Dr. Harry
Friedenwald, we devoted some time to seeing the country, particu-
larly Upper Galilee and the north, which I had not visited since 1907.
(The Turks still held that territory during my first stay with the
Zionist Commission.) We traveled fairly extensively, crossing the
Syrian border into Lebanon, and stopping off at some of the outpost
settlements. Every hill and every rock stood out like a challenge to me
at this time, telling me at every turn of the road how much planning
and energy and money would have to be poured into this country
before it could be ready to absorb large numbers of people.

Already the pressure from without was beginning to be felt. The
first chaliitsim (or pioneers) — ^the word was new then: it has since
accumulated about itself a great tradition — were arriving from the
broken Jewish communities of Poland and other countries of Central
and Eastern Europe. Some of them came with a rudimentary training
in agriculture; others brought nothing but their devotion and their
bare hands. They came by an extraordinary variety of routes; in
some instances their trek had lasted for months, even years, and had
carried them from the Ukraine to Japan, and back across the
Himalayas and India and Persia. Forward-looking men like Arthur
Ruppin were immensely heartened by their coming, nor could anyone
remain unmoved by this magnificent human material. But what I
saw chiefly was that we had no plans for their reception, because
we had no budget 1 Nor was there, on the part of the Palestine adminis-
tration — with a few notable exceptions — any intention of making
easier for us the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration.

CHAPTER 2 3

Palestine — Europe — ^America

Accumulating Difficulties — Obstruction by the Administration
— Indifference of Rich Jews — Land Bought in Emek Jesreel —
Tension in Palestine — The Tel Hai Tragedy — The Administra-
tion Supine — Jerusalem Riots — Jabotinsky Imprisoned — Pur-
pose of the Arab Riots — The San Remo Conference — The
Riddle of the Palestine Administration — General Bols^s Letter
— At San Remo — Balfour Declaration Confirmed — First Large
Postwar Zionist Conference — Brandeis Heads American Dele-
gation — Cleavage with the Brandeis Group on Jewish Agency
Idea and on Budget — I Am Invited to America — Louis Lipsky
— I Become President of the World Zionist Organization,

In those days began to emerge the triple field of force in which
I had to move for many years; the Jewish Homeland, British and
European politics, American Jewry formed a pattern to which my
life had to adapt itself. Jerusalem-London-New York became the
focal points : at each point varying fortunes and special complications.

In Palestine I found myself obsessed by the discrepancy between
the desirable and the possible. Occasionally the difficulties — political
and economic alike — seemed so formidable that I fell a prey to
dejection. Then I would go away alone into the hills for a little while,
or down to the seashore near Tel Aviv, to talk with some of the older
settlers — ^men like Abraham Shapiro of Petach Tikvah, or Joshua
Chankin, or others of their generation. They would tell me of their
own early difficulties, their own impressions when they had first come
to “this desert,” in days when there was not even a Zionist Organiza-
tion, let alone a Balfour Declaration, when the Turkish blight lay
on the land, and a Jew returning to Palestine was looked upon as a
sort of religious maniac. They showed me the places that were already
cultivated, covered with Jewish orange groves and vineyards : Re-
hovoth, Rishon-le-Zion, Petach Tikvah : so much had been done with
limited means, limited experience, limited manpower, in this country.
And then I knew again that Jewish energy, intelligence and will to
sacrifice would eventually triumph over all difficulties.

Abraham Shapiro was in himself a symbol of a whole process of

252

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA

253

Jewish readaptation. He accompanied me on most of my trips up and
down Palestine, partly as guide, partly as guard, and all the while
I listened to his epic stories of the old-time colonists. He was a
primitive person, spoke better Arabic than Hebrew, and seemed so
much a part of the rocks and stony hillsides of the country that it
was difficult to believe that he had been born in Lithuania. Here
was a man who in his own lifetime had bridged a gap of thousands of
years; who, once in Palestine, had shed his Galuth environment like
an old coat. There were a few others of his type : the Rosoff family
in Petach Tikvah, the Levontins, the Grasovkys and the Meirowitzes
in Rishon. But they were all too few, and the first obvious task was
to see to it that their numbers should be increased as fast as possible.

I went back to London in January 1920, carrying with me the
plans which had been prepared by the Jerusalem office — ^plans of
immigration, irrigation, colonization, calling for considerable sums.
Little provision was made for land purchase, for we believed, on
what seemed sufficient ground, that the Government would shortly
place at our 'disposal stretches of land which were Government
property. We were soon to discover that this belief had no basis in
fact, and that every dunam of land needed for our colonization work
would have to be bought in the open market at fantastic prices which
rose ever higher as our work developed. Every improvement we
made raised the value of the remaining land in that particular area,
and the Arab landowners lost no time in cashing in. We found we had
to cover the soil of Palestine with Jewish gold. And that gold, for
many, many years, came out of the pockets, not of the Jewish mil-
lionaires, but of the poor.

It was an income wholly inadequate for our requirements, but it
gave us the opportunity to make our first substantial land purchases,
and to take the first tentative steps in organized immigration. Thus,
in the summer of 1920, we bought the first Emek Jezreel lands, our
one extensive tract up to that date — about eighty thousand dunams
(twenty thousand acres). It had formerly belonged to the Sursuk
family — typical absentee landlords — and bore only a few half-deserted
Arab villages ravaged by malaria. The price we paid was, we then
thought, atrociously high, but time has shown it to have been thor-
oughly justified. We owed it to what was then regarded as the very
highhanded action of Mr, Ussishkin, in defiance of the prudent advice
of most of his colleagues on the Executive, and particularly of the
Americans. I like now to remember that I was among his few sup-
porters in that momentous decision.

I have anticipated a little. My stay in London was a short one;
by March 1920, I was on my way eastward again, this time with my
elder boy, Benjamin, who was then twelve. We were to spend the

TRIAL AND ERROR

254

Passover with my mother in Haifa. I mig*ht not have returned to
Palestine so soon had it not been for a meeting with Lord Allenby
in Paris on my westward journey. He was uneasy about the workings
of the Zionist Commission, and thought I should be in Jerusalem
rather than London.

We arrived to find Herbert Samuel already in Palestine. Allenby
and Bols (the latter was then Military Governor of Palestine) had
invited him in as adviser to the administration. Everyone was relieved
to have Samuel there, for General Allenby's premonition had been
only too sound : we all felt that things were not going well, that there
was tension in the country. There was a great deal of open agitation
in Arab circles, and there was no evidence that local administrators
were making any effort to avert trouble; on the contrary, there were
members of the official hierarchy who were encouraging the trouble-
makers. I am not alarmist by nature, and I was inclined at first to
be skeptical about the reports. But they persisted, and some of our
young people who were close to Arab circles were convinced that
‘'the day” was set for Passover, which that year coincided with both
Easter and Nebi-Musa — ^an Arab festival on which the inhabitants
of the neighboring villages assemble in Jerusalem to march in pro-
cession to the reputed grave of the Prophet Moses on a near-by hill.
Galilee, too, was in ferment owing to its nearness to Syria, whence
Feisal was being edged out, and where friction between the English
and the French was growing daily. Lawless bands prowled and
raided on our northern hills, and as is usual in such cases banditry
took on an aspect of patriotism. A month before my arrival Joseph
Trumpeldor, one of the earliest and greatest of the chalutz leaders,
had gone up with some companions to the defense of Tel Hai, an
infant colony near the Syrian border; and there he and five com-
panions, two of them women, were killed by marauders. The tragedy
had plunged the whole Yishuv into mourning.

As Passover approached the tension grew more marked, and by
that time some of the more friendly of the British officials — for
instance Meinertzhagen (now the Palestine administration's political
officer) — were apprehensive. Before leaving Jerusalem to spend
Passover with my mother, I called on General Allenby, who was
then in the city. I found him with General Bols and Herbert Samuel
at Government House, still located in the old German hospice on the
Mount of Olives. My representations regarding impending trouble
made little impression on them. Bols said: “There can be no trouble;
the town is stiff with troops !” I replied that I had had some experience
with the atmosphere which precedes pogroms ; I knew also that troops
usually proved useless at the last moment, because the whole paroxysm
was liable to be over before they could be rushed to the field of

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA

255

action. There would be half an hour or an hour of murder and looting,
and by the time the troops got there everything would be “in order”
and there would be nothing for them to do but pick up the pieces.
However, I could see that I was wasting my breath. I was advised
not to worry, and go home to my family for the Passover as arranged.
I could feel assured that everything would go off quietly in Jerusalem.

Against my better judgment I went home, though what I could have
done after this if I had stayed on in Jerusalem it is difficult to say. Pass-
over in Haifa came and went; and the next morning there was no dis-
turbing news from Jerusalem — ^no news at all, in fact. I felt uneasy. I
tried to telephone, but could get no connection, which naturally increased
my anxiety. So I decided — greatly to my mother’s disappointment — ^to
go up to Jerusalem and to take Benjy with me. The journey was un-
eventful as far as Nablus, but there I found a police escort. The Gover-
nor of Nablus, who supplied it, dropped a vague hint or two, and I
became more and more convinced that “something” really had happened.

Jerusalem, when we got there, looked deserted. A curfew had been
imposed, and there was little movement in the streets except for police
and military patrols. We made straight for Dr. Eder’s fiat in the center
of the city, and found him deeply disturbed. The story he had to tell was
one that has since become all too familiar: Arabs assembling at the
Mosque of Omar, listening to speeches of violent incitement, forming
a procession fired with fanatic zeal, marching through the streets attack-
ing any Jew's they happened to meet. In spite of all the rumors which
preceded the attack, the Jews seem to have been caught completely un-
awares, and practically no resistance was offered. When one small
group of young men, under Captain Jabotinsky, had come out to defend
their quarter, they had been promptly arrested. The troops had, of
course, arrived when all was over, and quiet now reigned in the city.
The situation was “well in hand.”

In the trials wffiich followed before a military court, Jabotinsky
received the savage sentence of fifteen years hard labor. He was later
amnestied (by Herbert Samuel when he became High Commissioner),
but rejected the amnesty with scorn, because it included Aref el Aref,
the main instigator of the pogrom, Amin el Husseini (the notorious
Grand Mufti of later years) and one or two others of the same type.
He insisted on making his appeal, and the sentence was in due course
quashed.

The impression made on Benjy by the atmosphere in Jerusalem in the
days that followed the pogrom terrified me. He was full of questions to
which I had no answers: “How can this happen? Who is guilty? Will
they be punished ?” I was thankful that we were staying with Eder, where
at least the worst of the stories that ran round like wildfire could be
kept from him.

256 TRIAL AND ERROR

All of us felt that this pogrom might have been averted had proper
steps been taken in time to check the agitation, had the attitude of the
administration been different. The bitterness and incitement had been
allowed to grow until they found their natural expression in riot and
murder. Philip Graves, no special friend of the Zionist movement, was
then in Palestine as Times correspondent under Lord Northcliffe; he
admitted, in the account which he published in 1923, that

The military, having completed the conquest of Palestine, naturally
desired a rest after a long and trying campaign, and therefore took the
line of least resistance in dealing with the local situation. They were,
moreover, jealous of their own official prerogatives, and strongly
objected to the manner in which members and employees of the
Zionist Commission too often overstepped their functions and at-
tempted, as the soldiers thought, to dictate to them. . . . But the
highly disturbed state of the chief Arab countries . , . and above all,
the failure of the British Government to furnish the Chiefs of the
Administration in Palestine with any detailed instructions, explain the
unwillingness of the soldiers to adopt an "unmistakable and active pro-
Zionist attitude.’ ... At the same time it must be admitted that, if
most of the accusations brought by the Zionists against the Military
Administration as a whole were unfounded, there were cases in which
individual officers showed pro- Arab or pan- Arab sympathies. The
Arabs, sometimes encouraged, perhaps unwittingly, by such officers,
grew more and more petulant.

While suggesting that ""the Zionists have made too much of this
pogrom,” and too little of the difficulties of the military, Graves adds :

Mistakes were made by some members of the Military Administra-
tion. The Chief of Staff to the Chief Military Administrator appears
to have left Jerusalem for a trip to Jericho at a moment when crowds
were already gathering in ominous fashion near the Jaffa Gate.

It might seem, to a dispassionate British observer, that we were
making too much of this pogrom. (Only six Jews were killed, though
there were many serious injuries.) But it is almost impossible to con-
vey to the outside world the sense of horror and bewilderment which it
aroused in our people, both in Palestine and outside. Pogroms in Russia
had excited horror and pity, but little surprise; they were ""seasonal
disturbances,” more or less to be expected round about the Easter and
Passover festivals. That such a thing could happen in Palestine, two
years after the Balfour Declaration, under British rule (""the town is
stiff with troops!”) was incomprehensible to the Jews, and dreadful
beyond belief. For those whose facile optimism had led them to believe
that all political problems were safely out of the way, and that all we
had to do was get on with the ""practical” work, this was — or should have
been — ^the writing on the wall.

There was, of course, something more to the pogrom than the primi-

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA

257

tive frenzy of its perpetrators. The instigators, those that had lashed
the mobs to blind action, were more farsighted than their illiterate
dupes ; they knew that within a few weeks there would be held in San
Remo, in northern Italy, the Conference of the Allied powers at which
the fate of the dismembered Turkish Empire would be considered ; they
knew that the Balfour Declaration would then come up for inclusion
in the disposition of Palestine ; from being a statement of policy it would
be converted — if Zionist hopes were realized — ^into the substance of an
international agreement. And they hoped by their demonstration of
force to prevent this consummation.

I decided that I must return to Europe immediately, to see what
could be done. With me traveled Alexander Aaronson (brother of
Aaron Aaronson, the discoverer of wild wheat, who had been killed the
year before in the London-Paris plane) and Mr. Emanuel Mohl, the
representative in Palestine of the American Zionists. We were given a
police escort as far as Egypt, and reached Cairo the evening of the same
day. We went to the Hotel Continental, where I usually stayed, to dis-
cover that a big dance was in progress, and I was painfully surprised
to note that a considerable proportion of the guests seemed to be drawn
from the Egyptian- Jewish community. A whole world lay between the
Jerusalem I had left that morning and the ballroom of the Continental.
Disheartened, I went straight to my room and, though the journalists
got to work on me soon enough, refused to see anybody. There was
only one person I wanted to see, and that was Allenby, and after seeing
him I would leave at the earliest possible moment.

I notified Allenby of my presence the next morning, and he invited
me to lunch. His first words when we met were: ^T’m afraid you’re
going to say : T told you so !’ ” I answered that I had no intention of say-
ing an)^hing of the sort, but I wanted him to know that we intended to
go on with our work, and at a quicker pace than hitherto, because I
believed that if we had, say four hundred thousand Jews in Palestine
instead of a miserable fifty thousand, such things would be less likely to
happen. (Not entirely accurate as prophecy, I fear, but that was how it
looked to me at the time.) Allenby asked what he could do. 'T suppose
you would like us to clear out !” I said : “On the contrary ! I very much
hope that at San Remo it will at last be definitely decided that the Brit-
ish are to have the Palestine Mandate, and that a more solid regime will
then be established. I would like to see a civil administration in Palestine
as soon as possible, as I don’t think the soldiers understand what are
the problems involved, or how to approach them,” He pressed his point :
“You don’t seem to have much faith in the military administration.” I
said: “That’s putting it mildly — ^in fact, I have none whatsoever! The
sooner they leave the better for everyone concerned !”

He took it good-humoredly — one could always talk to Allenby. The
subject was dropped and we turned to future plans for immigration,

258 TRIAL AND ERROR

land purchase and other practical matters. He was skeptical ; like most
of his officers, he did not really think we could make anything out of
this sandy, marshy, derelict country, though he certainly had far more
imagination than any of his subordinates. I knew it was no use arguing ;
only time could show. As I was leaving, he said : “You are going to San
Remo ; can I do anything for you?” I said I would like a letter from him
to Lloyd George, to facilitate my placing our problems before him. He
agreed at once — and the letter consisted of two sentences: the first
saying that he did not share Dr. Weizmann's opinion of his administra-
tion, and the second that he did agree with his practical proposals and
would be most grateful for an3d:hing Mr. Lloyd George could do to
further them !

I carried with me another letter — ^from Colonel Meinertzhagen —
describing the pogrom and the period leading up to it, and stressing the
blindness (real or willfully induced) of the administration which had
refused to see the danger after their attention had been repeatedly called
to it.

As we traveled slowly toward Ttaly I tried to find an answer to a
question which was to occupy me for the remainder of my life: Why,
from the very word go should we have had to face the hostility, or at
best the frosty neutrality of Britain's representatives on the spot? The
Home Government at this time was very friendly, even enthusiastic,
about the Jewish National Home policy. Enlightened British public
opinion regarded the Balfour Declaration — and later the Mandate — as
important and creditable achievements of the peace settlement. The
^^misdemeanors” of which we were later accused, and which were the
basis of arguments against us, were still in the future : we had bought no
land to speak of, hence no “displaced Arabs^^ argument ; we had brought
in few immigrants — hence no “overcrowding” argument — ^and Palestine
was officially described as seriously underpopulated anyhow; nobody
had had any experience with us on which to base praise or blame. Why,
then, were we damned in advance in the eyes of the official hierarchy?
And why was it an almost universal rule that such administrators as
came out favorably inclined turned against us in a few months? Why, for
that matter, was it later a completely invariable rule that politicians who
were enthusiastically for the Jewish Homeland during election forgot
about it completely if they were returned to office ? I shall have more to
say on this point but, to pose the question at its starkest, I shall quote
here a letter which General Ix)uis Bols, whom Allenby left behind him
as military administrator, wrote to his chief on December 3i, 1919 :

Dear General:

I am sending you this by Dr, Weizmann. He has been out here a
couple of months and has done much good work in dealing with all

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA

matters in a quiet, impartial way. I think there is little doubt that
antagonism to Zionism has been reduced by his action, and my view,
after a month as Chief Administrator, is that there will be no serious
difficulty in introducing a large number of Jews into the country pro-
vided it is done without ostentation. There are a few agitators and of
course their cry for an undivided Syria will continue.

The country is in need of development quickly in order to make the
people content. . . . The moment the Mandate is given we should be
ready to produce a big loan, part of which should be subscribed by the
inhabitants. I want Sir Herbert Samuel here for advice on this
matter. . . .

With such a loan, say ten or twenty millions, I feel certain I can
develop the country quickly and make it pay, and gradually the popu-
lation should increase from the present 900,000 to million. There is
plenty of room for this. The Jordan Valley should hold a million instead
of its present 1,000. . . .

I hope that :

1) You will send Weizmann back soon.

2) You will send Sir H. Samuel for a visit.

3) You will send me a big financial fellow.

4) Consider the plans for a loan.

If this is done I can promise you a country of milk and honey in ten
years, and I can promise you will not be bothered by anti-Zion
difficulties. . . .

Sincerely yours,

L. J. Bols.

It was under General Bols’s administration, and in the circumstances
already described, that the pogrom took place in Jerusalem less than
four months later.

We dawdled northward from Brindisi in constant expectation of
finding the line cut after the next station, for the Italian railways were
in the throes of a general strike. Eventually we reached Rome, and
thence San Remo — ^tired, grimy, hungry, but generally intact.

In the hall of the Hotel Royal I found Mr. Philip Kerr, then one of
Mr. Lloyd George’s secretaries; and my mood was such that I started
in on him straight away with congratulations on the first pogrom under
the British flag. (Looking back, I am more than a little sorry for Kerr
at that moment ; he was a good deal taken aback ! ) I gave him Allenby’s
letter and asked for an early appointment with the Prime Minister. In a
quiet comer of the lounge there sat, while we talked, Sir Herbert Samuel
and Mr. Sokolow, both exquisitely groomed, very calm and collected,
absolutely undisturbed. I was very conscious of the contrast we pre-
sented, in appearance, background, manner and, above all, frame of

26 o trial and error

mind. So, apparently, was Kerr, my personal friend, of many years, for
he said, glancing toward them : “When you look a little more like those
two, I shall be pleased to fix an appointment for you !” There was much
wisdom in that suggestion, though at the time I dismissed it as un-
warrantably frivolous. _ _ , r' t

A week or so passed in San Remo while we waited for the Confer-
ence to make up its mind about Palestine. As it was almost the last item
on the agenda we had little to do except gaze at the sea and discuss
things among ourselves. There was always the uneasy feeling that the
recent events in Palestine might bring some revision of policy, but Mr.
Balfour assured me that they were regarded as without importance, and
would certainly not affect policy, which had been definitely set. I was
glad to hear that this view was shared by Lord Curzon, who was known
to be no particular friend of ours. One of the first things mooted in those
days in the coulisses of the Conference was the suggestion that Herbert
Samuel should be our first High Commissioner in Palestine. Samuel
himself was willing, Mr. Lloyd George and Mr. Balfour both approved.
It was clear that no one had been put off by the incidents in Palestine j
the instigators of the pogrom had failed in their main purpose.

The Conference dragged on interminably, and the decision about the
Palestine Mandate was not taken until the last few hours. These found
me nervously pacing the hall of the Royal Hotel, waiting for the dele-
gates to emerge from the Council chamber. Suddenly I caught sight of
Mr. Balfour, waving impatiently to someone in the distance. I went up
to him and asked if he was waiting for the delegates. “Oh, no,” he
answered, calmly. *^My tennis partners. They re very late !

At long last the gentlemen came out, and I made for Philip Kerr and
the Prime Minister, both of whom proceeded to congratulate me warmly
on the result of the meeting; the confirmation of the Balfour Declaration
and the decision to give the Mandate to Great Britain. Mr. Lloyd George
was particularly kind, telling me that we now had a very ^eat oppor-
tunity and must show what good use we could make of it. He said:
“You have no time to waste. Today the world is like the Baltic before a
frost. For the moment it is still in motion. But if it gets set, you will
have to batter your heads against the ice blocks and wait for a second
thaw.”

Everyone was kind at San Remo, including Lord Curzon, whose
attitude I particularly appreciated because I knew him to be far from
enthusiastic about the National Home idea. But he was entirely loyal to
the policy adopted, and meant to stand by the declaration — as he did,
later on, when he became Foreign Secretary.

Even the Arab delegations seemed happy about it all ! Anybody enter-
ing the dining room of the Royal that evening would have found the
Jewish and Arab delegations seated together at a really festive board.

201

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA

it.

congratulating each other under the benevolent paternal gaze of the
British delegation at a neighboring table. The only rnan to ignore the
whole business was Philip Sassoon, another of Lloyd George's secre-
taries — ^and, as it happens, the only Jewish member of the British
delegation.

The violence of the shock which the Jerusalem pogrom had created in
the Jewish world, the extent of the fear that a revision of the Palestine
policy might ensue, could be gauged from the reaction to the San Remo
decision. Representatives of the Genoa Jewish community came over
the next day to congratulate us, and we soon learned, by cable and from
the press, of the general enthusiasm which the decision aroused every-
where. I was deeply moved when, arriving a few days later at Victoria
Station in London, I was met by representatives of the commrmity bear-
ing the Torah — the Scroll of the Law.

To complete the pattern of this chapter, in which I am attempting to
indicate the triple field of force which constituted my Zionist work, I
shall speak briefly of the first large contact with America, which took
place early in July of that year; not, however, in a visit to America —
that was to come soon after — but through the arrival in London of a
large American delegation to the Zionist Annual Conference. Seven
years had passed since the last fully representative gathering of world
Zionists — ^the eleventh Congress, held in 1913. Justice Brandeis headed
the American delegation, and there at once became manifest those diver-
gences between the American leaders and ourselves — ^and within the
American delegation, too — of which I have spoken in the last chapter.

With a number of my European colleagues I felt that we should lose
no time in approaching the great Jewish organizations which might wish
to share in the practical work in Palestine, with a view to the creation
of some kind of Jewish council. This was the idea which eventually
developed into the Jewish Agency, To the American leaders — ^for con-
venience I shall, in this ' connection, speak hereafter of the Brandeis
group — it seemed unnecessary to have any kind of double organization :
it was their view that people who wished to co-operate in the work of
rebuilding the Jewish National Home could join the Zionist Organiza-
tion.

This was not merely a difference in formal approach; it represented
a real cleavage. The Brandeis group envisaged the Zionist Organization
as henceforth a purely economic body. Since, in their view, it had lost
its political character by having fulfilled its political function, there was
no longer any reason why non-Zionists who were prepared to help in the
economic upbuilding of Palestine, but who were not prepared to sub-
scribe to political Zionism, should refuse to become members. But our
reason for wishing to keep the Zionist Organization in being as a
separate body was precisely the conviction that the political work was

26 o trial and error

far from finished ; the Balfour Declaration and the San Remo decision
were the beginning of a new era in the political struggle, and the Zionist
Organization was our instrument of political action. There were num-
bers of Jewish organizations and individuals which, with all their readi-
ness to lend a hand in the practical work in Palestine, insisted that they
would not be implicated in any of our political difficulties. Their attitude
might be illogical, but there it was, and it had to be reckoned with. The
question was, then, whether a new organization should be formed for the
accommodation of the non-Zionists, or whether the Zionist Organization
should be completely reorientated, should, in fact, give up completely its
political character.

A complicated and sometimes acrimonious discussion developed round
this subject; the proposal of the Brandeis group was defeated by a
substantial majority.

A second controversial point was the budget. The European group
set this at something in the neighborhood of two million pounds a year,
to which they had to admit that they themselves could contribute very
little. The Americans generally — ^and not only the Brandeis group — ^were
shocked by this ''astronomical” figure, and asserted they could not
guarantee more than one hundred thousand pounds a year, Mr. Brandeis
contended that this was the utmost that could be got from American
Jewry — and this at a time when it was well known that American Jews
had acquired and were acquiring considerable wealth.

I found myself explaining that we could not possibly adopt a budget
of that order ; it was not merely inadequate to the task which faced us, it
was derisory : it would damn us in the eyes of friends and enemies alike.
I added that if this was all he could find in America, I should have to
come over and try for myself.

I doubt if Justice Brandeis ever quite forgave me for that challenge.
Eventually the Conference reached agreement with a group of the Amer-
ican delegation — this was the group which was afterward to lead in the
struggle against the Brandeis regime — ^headed by Louis Lipsky, which
invited me to come over to America at the earliest opportunity after my
return from Palestine, and to see for myself what could and what could
not be done.

I found in Lipsky an unusual combination ; he was perhaps the leading
theoretician among the American Zionists, but he possessed a remark-
able understanding of the European movement. Of him, too, I can say
that, although for long periods we did not communicate with each other,
we almost invariably reached the same conclusions on important prob-
lems. During the period of the construction of the Jewish Agency he
was under constant attack by the non-Zionists. When they met him, they
discovered in him a man of first-rate mind, of charm and integrity. He
is still the pillar of Zionism in America, but like myself he is now trying

PALESTINE — EUROPE — AMERICA 263

to put some distance between himself and the daily rough and tumble of
the movement. His value as an elder statesman will still be great for
many years.

To return to the London Conference: toward its close it elected
officers to conduct the affairs of the movement until the first postwar
Congress should be able to meet; Justice Brandeis became Honorary
President, I became President of the Organization, and Mr. Sokolow
became chairman of the Executive. Together with the Actions Com-
mittee which was then elected, and which met in July, 'we appointed as
departmental heads Mr. Ussishkin, Mr. Julius Simon (representing
America) and Mr. Nehemiah de Lieme, of Holland. The Presidium
and the departmental heads constituted the Executive.

Thus the movement had once more a constituted, if provisional, gov-
erning body, and incidentally I acquired, for the first time, some formal
authority. During the greater part of the negotiations in London I had
had none whatsoever, though since early in 1917 I had been President
of the English Zionist Federation. That, however, was only one of the
smaller constituent bodies of the Zionist Congress; its importance had
been due only to the fact that it had been at the center of action when
the constituted authorities of the movement — ^those elected by the prewar
Congress — could not even be consulted. It will be remembered that we
had, in fact, severed all connection with the '‘Copenhagen Bureau” at an
early stage in the war.

One of the highlights of the Conference — and, I must add, one of its
few attractive features — wzs a great public meeting held at the Albert
Hall under the chairmanship of Lord Rothschild. This was, I think, the
only occasion on which Lord Balfour addressed a great Jewish gather-
ing in England. I dined with him before the meeting at 4 Carlton Gar-
dens, and as we drove from there to Albert Hall, Lord Balfour was
struck by the great crowds of Jews making their way to the West End.
In his usual vague manner he asked me; "But who are all these people?”
I reminded him of what I had told him in 1906, that there were Zionist
Jews enough to pave the streets of Russia and Poland: "These are a
few — ^a very few — of them !”

When the Conference finally dispersed, my wife and I went for a
short rest to Switzerland, returning to London again, via Paris, in the
autumn. My thoughts were again turning West, to the American visit
which, I was beginning to feel, I had undertaken rather lightheartedly
at the Conference. Herbert Samuel's departure for Palestine, as its first
High Commissioner, had marked the close of an important chapter in
"political Zionism,” and opened the door, as we then thought, to a great
expansion of Jewish effort in Palestine. But the portent of the Annual
Conference remained an ominous cloud on tlie horizon, and I was

264 TRIAL AND ERROR

haunted by the fear that American Jewry would fail to rise to the
occasion.

I felt it best to arm myself, as it were, with another visit to Palestine.
This time I went with Sir Alfred Mond. We spent January and part of
February touring the country, and Sir Alfred showed himself — ^hard-
headed man of affairs that we all took him to be — ^profoundly suscep-
tible to the more romantic aspects of the work. I remember still the shock
of astonishment which went through me when, as we stood watching a
group of chalutzim breaking stones for the road between Petach Tikvah
and Jaffa, I observed how very close he was to tears. They looked to
him, those children of the ghetto, altogether too frail and too studious
for the job they had in hand. Perhaps he had just realized that these
young men and women were building themselves, as well as the road.

Early in March I was back in London, preparing for my first contact
with the New World.

CHAPTER 94

Cleveland and Carlsbad

My First Visit to America — Its Purpose — Albert Einstein
Joins Our Delegation — New York's Reception oj Us — The
Deeper Meaning oj the Split in American Zionism ^ ip2i —
‘^Private Initiative" Versus National Funds" — ‘'^Washington
Versus Pinsk" — Break with the Brandeis Group — Cleveland
Convention — Fund Campaigning in America — Zionist Educor-
tional Work — The Carlsbad Congress — Disappointments in
Palestine — Larger Immigration and Colonisation Begin — Criti-
cism of Our “Fancy Experiments" — Tug oj War between
City and Soil,

X HAVE so far indicated only the beginning of the divergence
between the Brandeis group on the one hand and the remainder of
American Zionism, allied with European Zionism, on the other. It
had to do with much more than program and method; its source
was a deeper divergence in what might almost be called folkways.
It reached into social and historic as well as economic and political
concepts ; it was connected with the organic interpretation of Zionism.
It cannot be described in abstract terms, and its nature will reveal
itself gradually as the narrative unfolds.

Some suspicion of this truth was already present in my mind when
I made my preparations for the trip to America — ^for me a terra
incognita. Shmarya Levin was there, of course; he had been caught
by the war and held to the country for four years, during which
he had carried on a great educational campaign among Zionists and
Jews at large. His work in those early years was to bear fruit for
an entire generation, and I knew that at the time of my first visit in
1921 he was doing everything possible to prepare the ground for us.
But I still had misgivings about the magnitude of the task before me,
and wished to go armed with as much support as I could find.

The immediate purposes of the trip were two; first to found the
American Keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation Fund), as one of
the two main instruments of the rebuilding of the Homeland — ^the
other, the Jewish National Fund, I have already described; second,
to awaken American interest in the Hebrew University. It seemed

265

266

TRIAL AND ERROR

to us that the foundation stones had been sitting alone on Mount
Scopus for quite long enough, and now that we had a civil administra-
tion under Herbert Samuel it was time to get on with the job of
actually establishing the University. At the back of my mind there
was also the intention of taking some soundings as to the prospects
of establishing some sort of Jewish council (or agency) with the co-
operation of some of the important Jewish organizations engaged in
public welfare work.

It was an ambitious program — ^more so than I quite realized. But
I set about the creation of as strong a delegation as possible. From
among my colleagues I enlisted Mr. Ussishkin, and Dr. Ben-Zion
Mossinsohn, director of the Herzlian Gymnasium in Tel Aviv. I
also approached Professor Albert Einstein, with special reference
to the Hebrew University, and to my great delight found him ready
to help. He brought with him his secretary, Simon Ginsburg, son
of Achad Ha-am ; my wife and I joined them at Plymouth, to continue
the journey on a Dutch boat. Leonard Stein, just released from the
army, and recently returned from Palestine, where he had been acting
as Military Governor of Safed, came along as my personal assistant.
So we were quite a party on the boat.

I remember that we arrived in New York Harbor about noon on
Saturday, April 2, 1921, altogether unaware of the extraordinary-
reception that awaited us. Some half-dozen boats carrying friends
and journalists came out to meet us, and for the whole of that after-
noon we were subjected to an endless series of grueling if well-meant
interviews. Since it was the Sabbath, we could not land until the onset
of evening ; we simply had “to take it.” Einstein was, of course, the
chief target ; his name was something of a portent in those days, and
the journalists were eager to get from him a bright, popular paragraph
on the theory of relativity. When they failed in this, they invariably
turned to me, saying, “But you’re a scientist, too. Dr. Weizmann.”
In the end, in sheer desperation, we took refuge in an inconspicuous
cabin and waited till it was time to go ashore.

We intended, of course, to proceed straight to our hotel, settle down,
and begin planning our work. We had reckoned — literally — ^without
our host, which was, or seemed to be, the whole of New York Jewry.
Long before the afternoon ended, delegations began to assemble on
the quay and even on the docks. Pious Jews in their thousands came on
foot all the way from Brooklyn and the Bronx to welcome us. Then
the cars arrived, all of them beflagged. Every car had its horn and
every horn was put in action. By the time we reached the gangway the
area about the quays was a pandemonium of people, cars and mounted
police. The car which we had thought would transport us quickly and

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD

267

quietly to our hotel fell in at the end of an enormous procession
which wound its way through the entire Jewish section of New York.
We reached the Commodore at about eleven-thirty, tired, hungry,
thirsty and completely dazed. The spacious hall of the hotel was
packed with another enthusiastic throng; we had to listen to several
speeches of welcome, and I remember making some sort of reply. It
was long after midnight when we found our rooms.

I was the more anxious to come to grips with my task because I
knew that this magnificent popular reception was only one part of
the story. Before leaving the ship I had received a printed memoran-
dum brought to me by Judge Julian Mack, in which the Brandeis
group, which constituted the American Zionist administration, ex-
pounded their views and set forth the conditions on which they would
be prepared to support my mission. The main points dealt with their
conception of the new character of the Zionist Organization and with
the economics of the movement. Henceforth world Zionism was to
consist of strong local federations, so that the old unity which had
been the background of the authority of our Congresses should be
replaced merely by co-ordination. In this there was a reflection of
the deeper — and less conscious, therefore less overtly formulated —
feelings of the Brandeis group about the organic unity of world
Jewry. To us who had grown up since childhood in the movement,
Zionism was the precipitation into organized form of the survival
forces of the Jewish people; Zionism was in a sense Jewishness itself,
set in motion for the re-creation of a Jewish Homeland. The World
Zionist Organization, the Congresses, were not just ad hoc instru-
ments; they were the expression of the unity of the Jewish people.
The propositions of the Brandeis group, dealing ostensibly with
merely formal matters, with organizational instrumental rearrange-
ments, actually reflected a denial of Jewish nationalism; they made
of Zionism simply a sociological plan — ^and not a good one, as I shall
show — instead of the folk renaissance that it was. And then there
was the attitude of the Brandeis group on the national funds. It
became clear that the opposition to the attempt to raise a large
budget really did not spring from a conviction that large sums could
not be obtained: the Brandeis group stood for emphasis on “private
investment’’ and “individual project” methods. My colleagues and I
knew that “private initiative” would not be feasible to any significant
extent before the Jewish people, in its corporate, national capacity,
had made the financial effort which would create the foundations of
the Homeland.

What we had here was a revival, in a new form and a new country,
of the old cleavage between “East” and “West,” in Zionism and
Jewry; and the popular slogan called it, in fact, “Washington vs.

268

TRIAL AND ERROR

Pinsk/’ a convenient double allusion to Brandeis and myself, and
also to the larger ideological implication.

There was, in fact, a deep gulf; but I was determined to do my
utmost toward finding a compromise solution. The memorandum
presented me by Judge Mack, as a condition for the co-operation
with me of the Zionist Organization of America, I could not accept.
It was in the nature of an ultimatum. Its formal provisions dealt with
matters on which only the World Zionist Congress could speak
authoritatively ; I could not agree to changes which I, as President
of the World Zionist Organization, had not been empowered to
introduce. And still I hoped that some discreet middle road would
be found in practice, and that we would face the world as a united
group. I was all the time thinking of the people in Palestine whose
hopes were centered on this trip, and of the new High Commissioner,
so anxious to see large-scale colonization undertaken in the country.
We had to have maximum results.

We felt — and the event proved us right — that the great masses of
American Zionists resented the attitude of their leaders, but the
leaders were powerful, and I foresaw that it would be difficult to do
anything substantial without their co-operation. For weeks we dis-
cussed the possibility of compromise — greatly assisted by Leonard
Stein^s conciliatory disposition and drafting abilities. We knew he
would go to the utmost limit of possible concession, and that if it
were possible to find a “formula^’ he would find it. On the other hand,
there was Ussishkin, who was not prepared to yield a jot on the
budget, or on the constitution and functions of the Keren Hayesod;
at the other end, the Brandeis group was not going to permit us to
proclaim the Keren Hayesod as a Zionist instrument, and to raise
funds for it in America, without an acceptance of the terms of the
memorandum.

It was an unhappy situation, with passions mounting on both sides
and things being said which added nothing to the substance of the
discussion. A whispering campaign was launched against the Exec-
utive in Jerusalem, which was accused of consisting of men completely
incapable of handling large sums of money : great idealists, of course,
but utterly impractical, and given to "^'commingling of funds’’. And
neither they (the members of the Palestine Executive), nor we (the
anti-Brandeisists), had any notion of "American standards” — what-
ever that might mean. Enough poison was put in circulation to render
the collection of any substantial sum of money extremely difficult.

As time went on the ideological controversy also crystallized into
a conflict between the mass of American Zionism and a few privileged
"Western” Jews who occupied high positions in American society.
There was also implied a struggle for the control of the fate of

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD 269

Palestine, whether it should belong to “America'’ or “Europe" — a
struggle which in turn implied a fatal breach in the unity of world
Jewry. All this was further complicated by the fact that some non-
Zionist American Jews whom I was intensely anxious to win over for
the practical work in Palestine (e.g., Mr. Louis Marshall and his
friends) disliked the Brandeis group. Marshall himself, as will be seen,
was no fanatical opponent of Zionism, and often acted as our disinter-
ested adviser. Another, darker complication developed during our stay
in America — ^the bitter Jaffa outbreak of May 1921, which led Herbert
Samuel to suspend immigration temporarily. Everything during those
days pointed to the urgent necessity of proceeding with our work and of
getting a firm foothold for the Jewish National Home.

All our endeavors to find a compromise formula led to nothing.
Samuel Untermyer, the brilliant lawyer and arbitrator, did his best
to find a middle ground for us, but in vain. In the end we were
compelled to break off relations with the Brandeis group, and I had
to issue a statement to the American Jewish public, that, by virtue
of the decision of the last Zionist Conference, and of the authority
vested in me as President of the World Zionist Organization I
declared the Keren Hayesod to be established in the United States.
This action provoked violent protest from the other side, mingled
with some abuse — all of it played up by the general press, so that
the public at large was fully aware of our dissensions. So, of course,
was the British Embassy. I remember going to see Sir Eric Geddes
in Washington one morning when one of our opponents' pronounce-
ments had appeared in the papers, and he remarked that I had
rather placed myself in the position of President Wilson when he
appealed to the Italian people over the heads of their constituted
Government ; he hoped I would not meet with the same fate ! I said
that my relations with the American Jewish community were, after all,
a good deal more organic than Wilson's with the Italians, and I
therefore hoped to avoid his failure.

My hope was vindicated when we underwent our formal trial of
strength with the Brandeis group. At the twenty-fourth Convention
of the Zionist Organization of America — ^the famous “Cleveland
Convention" — of June, in that year, the mass of the American Zionists
proved that they understood thoroughly the nature of the issues. The
fact was that the American leaders did not want the Keren Hayesod,
nor did they really want to see the Zionist Organization a world
organization. They regarded our political work as ended — ^this despite
the shock of the May riots in Palestine, and Samuel's suspension of
immigration — and they had their own views as to the economic
upbuilding of the country. All my detailed reports to the American
leaders about the attitude of the British administration in Palestine,

TRIAL AND ERROR

270

and about the need for mass colonization, failed to move them. They
refused to see the portents, and they insisted that the best plan
would be for every separate Zionist federation — the German, the
Austrian, the Polish — to undertake some specific task in Palestine,
the Executive of the World Zionist Organization having nothing to
do but ‘‘co-ordinate’' the work. This proposal would have meant, in
effect, the reduction of the whole World Zionist Organization to the
status of a technical bureau with doubtful authority ; and the Zionist
Congress, which was the forum of world Zionism, its deliberative
and legislative body, expressing the will and the aspirations of world
Jewry, would — if it did not fall into complete desuetude — ^become a
conference of “experts.”

All this was threshed out in Cleveland, in an atmosphere which
I could not re-create even if I wanted to. I attended the Convention,
together with the rest of the European delegation, but did not think
it proper to take part in the proceedings. The issue was fought out
between the American Zionists: on the one side the nationally known
figures of Judge Mack, Professor Felix Frankfurter, Stephen S. Wise;
on the other the relatively obscure but thoroughly representative
figures like Louis Lipsky, Abraham Goldberg and Morris Rothenberg.
The result was that the administration was defeated by an overwhelm-
ing majority. I am afraid that they did not prove very good losers,
for the whole Brandeis group resigned from the Executive of the
American Organization. Nor did they remain neutral; most of them
entered into active and formidable opposition against our work. There
is little doubt that our efforts in the first few years after Cleveland —
crucial years for Palestine — ^would have been much more productive if
not for the implacable hostility of most of our former colleagues.

We declared the Keren Hayesod officially established in America.
Samuel Untermyer became its first President, and the job of organiz-
ing and popularizing the fund began. We divided the work among us
as far as possible — I am speaking now of the European delegation —
but I am afraid the lion’s share of it fell on my shoulders; first,
because I spoke both English and Yiddish, while the others, Ussishkin,
Mossinsohn and Shmarya Levin, though excellent Yiddish speakers —
Shmarya was, as I have already told, an orator of the very first
order — knew but little English at this time; second, because I was
urged to take the lead. Thus I found myself committed to visiting
most of the principal American Jewish centers.

To anyone who has not actually been through it, it is difficult to
convey any idea of what this experience meant. It must not be con-
fused with the round of a lecturer, and not even with that of a political
campaigner; I was, if you like, both of these, but I was also out to
raise large sums of money. Besides, it was my first visit to the States,

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD

271

and I was completely ignorant of the terrain; I did not know what
had to be done or — more important — ^what could safely be omitted.
A typical day’s “stand” in American towns worked out something
like this :

One arrived by an early train, to be met at the station by a host
of enthusiasts in cars, who formed a sort of guard of honor to escort
one through the streets of a still half-sleeping town. All advance
requests for the omission of this part of the proceedings, all sugges-
tions that it would be helpful and healthful to have an hour or two
to oneself on arrival after a night on a train, were completely ignored ;
one was repeatedly assured that the parade was an essential part of
the publicity campaign — indispensable advertisement of coming events.
So one submitted, in order not to upset the elaborate arrangements in
which the local workers had taken so much pride.

From the station one proceeded to the hotel or to the city hall, to
breakfast with anywhere between twenty-five to fifty local notables,
including, usually, the mayor. One listened and replied to speeches of
welcome. By the time this was over, it would be about ten o’clock,
and the cameramen and reporters would be ready, all looking for some
particularly sensational pose or statement. No discouragement could
put them off. For some unfathomable reason they always billed me
as the inventor of TNT. It was in vain that I systematically and
repeatedly denied any connection with, or interest in, TNT. The
initials seemed to exercise a peculiar fascination over journalists: and
I suppose high explosive is always news.

One was lucky to be through with the press by eleven or eleven-
thirty, and to find time to sneak up to one’s room for a bath and
change before the formal luncheon, usually timed for twelve-thirty,
and seldom starting less than an hour late. This was a long, grueling
affair of many courses and speeches, and the arrangement always
was that the guest of honor should speak last, lest the public should
be tempted to leave, thus depriving some of the other speakers of
their audience. After this performance one was permitted an hour
or so of rest, though even this was seldom without its interruptions.

In the late afternoon came the meeting for the local workers, tea —
and more speeches ; then there was dinner, very like lunch, only more
so, and the day usually concluded, officially, with a mass meeting at
the town hall or some similar building. From the mass meeting one was
escorted by friends and well-wishers to the train, to retreat, with a
sigh of relief, into one’s sleeper, and one awoke the next morning
in the next city on the list, to begin the whole performance all over
again.

This went on with astounding regularity for weeks and months, with
only minor variations. If I stayed more than a day in any town, I might

TRIAL AND ERROR

272

indeed manage to get a little leisure. Then the local leader was sure to
place his car at my disposal “to drive around a bit and see the sights.”
Being inexperienced, I used to accept, in the earlier days, with alacrity.
But when the car arrived it usually contained three or four occupants, all
grimly determined to entertain me, or to be entertained by me, as long
as the drive lasted. And I had hoped for a little blessed solitude, and
fresh air ! ■ _

Intervals between public functions were usually filled in with private
talks with “big donors” (a big donor was anyone whose contribution
might be expected to reach about five thousand dollars). Often, alas, the
“prospect” turned out to be a gentleman the indefiniteness of whose
knowledge about Palestine was exceeded only by the extreme definite-
ness of his views about it. I would have to listen then to strange versions
of the criticisms leveled at us by the Brandeis group, or by non-Zionists
and anti-Zionists, to crank schemes for the overnight creation of a Jew-
ish Homeland, to paternal practical advice from successful businessmen,
all of which had to be received attentively and courteously.

They were good, kindly, well-intentioned people, some of them in-
telligent and informed Zionists, but my endurance was reaching its limit.
I thought longingly of the ship that was to take us back to Europe. Yet
even in Europe — ^though I did not know it yet — I was never to be free
from the consequences of my work in the States. As soon as the summer
invasion began, if I happened to be in London or Paris, I had to face
the necessity of meeting the friends who had helped me in Boston or
Baltimore or Chicago. It was important to show them every courtesy,
lest they become offended and decide to take it out of me when I re-
turned to America. It was not that I minded very much giving umbrage
on my own account; but I learned that there were people who, having
tried to see me in Europe and failed — I am sure through no fault of mine
— ^went back to the States to cancel their pledges to the Keren Hayesod !

In the States a big donor would often make his contribution to the
ftmd conditional on my accepting an invitation to lunch or dine at his
house. Then I wotdd have to face a large family gathering — ^three or four
generations — ^talk, answer questions, listen to appeals and opinions, and
watch my replies carefully, lest I inadvertently scare off a touchy
prospect. I would sit through a lengthy meal and after it meet a select
group of local celebrities, and again listen and answer till all hours of the
night. Generally, I felt that I had fuUy earned that five thousand dollars.

On the whole the response of American Jewry was remarkably good,
considering their unpreparedness for the burden thrust upon them, and
the secession and active opposition of the Brandeis group. The work was
vigorously continued after our departure, and the first year’s income was
about four times the five hundred thousand dollars which Mr. Brandeis
had set as the maximum obtainable from the Jews of America, thus

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD

273

proving the tonic effect of setting a fairly high budget. But we still had
nothing near the sum required by the program of the Annual Conference.
However, we could go ahead with some land purchase, immigration and
settlement. The first year or two after the foundation of the Keren
Hayesod saw the founding of the Agricultural Mortgage Bank, an ex-
tremely important institution, the beginning of our payments on the
Emek Jezreel purchase, and the founding of Nahalal, the first of our
postwar settlements, which became the center of our activity in the
Emek, the draining of its swamps, the combatting of malaria, and so on.

As the years passed, and my visits to America were repeated almost
annually, a sort of tradition was established and a routine — a policeman’s
beat between Jerusalem and San Francisco. Gradually the Keren
Hayesod took hold, became an acknowledged institution, until it was
swallowed up in the United Palestine Appeal. The work grew easier,
more profitable and more pleasant; visitors began to come to Palestine
from America, contacts between the countries became frequent.

But there was something more to all this than political propaganda
and money raising. All of us regarded our mission as, fundamentally,
education in Zionism, both on its practical and on its theoretical side.
On the practical side I sought to explain to American businessmen the
reasons why their American experience did not always apply to the
Palestinian scene. I said : ''When a pioneer comes into Palestine, he finds
a deserted land, neglected for generations. The hills have lost their trees,
the good soil has been washed into the valleys and carried to the sea. We
must restore the soil of Palestine. We must have money to sink in Pales-
tine, to reconstruct what has been destroyed. You will have to sweat
and labor and give money on which you will not get any return, but
which will be transformed into national wealth. When you drain the
marshes, you get no returns, but you accumulate wealth for the gen-
erations to come. If you reduce the percentage of malaria from forty to
ten, that is national wealth.”

And again: "You cannot build up Nahalal and Nuris without national
funds. The chalutzim are willing to miss meals twice a week. But cows
must be fed, and you cannot feed a cow with speeches.”

How obvious it all seems now, how new it was then, and for years to
come, and how difficult to get the lesson home. I shall show later what
a fierce struggle developed in Zionism between what I considered pre-
mature emphasis on private enterprise and profits, and the laying of the
national foundations. But there was needed, as the background to that
understanding which I sought to instill in regard to practical matters, a
feeling for the basic elements of the Jewish problem. I said to one
meeting :

"Among the anti-Semites none is more interesting than the tender-
hearted variety. Their anti-Semitism is always based on a compliment.

274 TRIAL AND ERROR

They tell us : ‘You are the salt of the earth —and there are Jews who
feel themselves extraordinarily flattered. Yet I do not consider it a com-
pliment to be called ‘the salt of the earth.’ The salt is used for someone
else’s food. It dissolves in that food. And salt is good only in small
quantities. If there is too much salt in the food you throw out the food
and the salt with it. That is to say, certain countries can digest a certain
number of Jews ; once that number has been passed, something drastic
must happen: the Jews must go.

“They call us not only salt, but leaven. The Jews are not only the salt
of the earth, but also a valuable ferment. They produce extraordinary
ideas. They provide initiative, energy; they start things. But this com-
pliment, too, is of a doubtful sort. There is a very fine difference between
a ferment and a parasite. If the ferment is increased by ever so little
beyond a certain point, it becomes a parasitical growth. So that those
who wish to be polite call us ‘ferments’; others, less polite, and less
scientific, prefer to call us ‘parasites.’ ”

I explained part of the reason for the status of the Jew with a simple
simile: “You will always be treated as a guest if you, too, can play the
host. The only man who is invited to dinner is the man who can have
dinner at home if he likes. Switzerland is a small country, and there are
more Swiss outside of Switzerland than in it. But there is no such thing
as anti-Swiss sentiment in the sense that there is anti-Jewish sentiment.
The Swiss has a home of his own, to which he can retreat, to which he
can invite others. And it does not matter how small your home is, as
long as it is your home. If you want your position to be secure else-
where, you must have a portion of Jewry which is at home, in its own
country. If you want the safety of equality in other universities, you
must have a university of your own. The university in Jerusalem will
affect your status here: professors from Jerusalem will be able to come
to Harvard, and professors from Harvard to Jerusalem.” This is, in
fact, what has happened.

I sought to bring inspiration to them from the past. I said: “We are
reproached by the whole world. We are told that we are dealers in old
clothes, junk. We are perhaps the sons of dealers in old clothes, but we
are the grandsons of Prophets, Think of the grandsons, and not of the
sons.”

It was really moving, the way they listened and took the words to
heart. Despite the exhaustion and the discomfort and the occasional
tedium, I felt an immense privilege in the work. I told them once: “I
cannot think of any man with whom I would change positions. Here I
am, without policemen, without an army, without a navy, facing out with
a group of fellow-workers a proposition which is really unheard of:
trying to build up a country which has been waste two thousand years,
with a people which has been waste two thousand years, at a time when

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD

275

one-half of that people, perhaps the best half, has been broken up by a
terrible war. And here, at midnight, you are sitting, five or six thousand
miles away from Palestine, a country which many of you may never see,
and you are waiting to hear me speak about that country. And you
know very well that you will probably have to pay for it. It is extraordi-
nary. I defy anyone, Jew or gentile, to show me a proposition like it,'’

From my first visit to America I went almost directly to the Congress
in Carlsbad, the first since 1913 to bring together representatives of
Zionists from all over the world.

Herbert Samuel had been High Commissioner for about a year, but
there was already noticeable, in the Congress discussions, the beginnings
of the disappointment, and even bitterness, which his regime was to
inspire. I myself felt that he had not had a real chance yet, but three
things had happened which gave rise to uneasiness.

First there had been his handling of the riots of May 1921, which I
have already mentioned. Desirous of starting his work as peaceably as
possible, Samuel's reaction to the riots had been to stop immigration,
and this decision had been announced at a gathering of Arab notables in
Ramleh. Both the decision, and the form of its announcement, came as a
severe shock to Jews everywhere. Immigrants already within sight of the
shores of Palestine were not allowed to land. Samuel disregarded the
protests of Dr. Eder, and the interdict stood.

Samuel had also amnestied the two principal instigators of the Jaifa
and Jerusalem pogroms, and it was largely due to him that Haj Amin
el Husseini later became head of the Moslem Supreme Council and
Mufti of Jerusalem (or Grand Mufti), with very considerable powers,
and control over large funds — ^and with results too well known to need
mention. In spite of the proverb, poachers turned gamekeepers are not
always a success. The Arabs soon discovered that the High Commission-
er's deep desire for peace made him susceptible to intimidation, and this
discovery led to the third of what we regarded as Samuel's mistakes.

An Arab lawyer in Haifa, Wadi Bustani by name, had succeeded in
working up a widespread agitation on behalf of certain Bedouin who had
frequented the State lands in the Beisan area. They laid claim, through
Bustani, to a large tract of irrigable Government land — about four hun-
dred thousand dunams (one hundred thousand acres) ; and eventually,
after a good deal of argument, their demands were granted, and the land
was handed over to them for a nominal fee. One of the most important and
most potentially fertile districts of Palestine (and one of the very few
such districts which were ''State lands”) was thus condemned from the
outset to stagnation and sterility, and important water resources which
could fertilize much larger areas still run to waste today because of the
"Beisan Agreement.” Except for such portions as the Jews have been
able to buy piecemeal from individual Arab beneficiaries, the Beisan

276 TRIAL AND ERROR

lands are still, in fact, not under plow. I believe that Samuel himself later
realized that the claims put forward through Bustani had no legal
foundation; and the British representative who appeared before the
Mandates Commission in 1926 could not defend the action on economic
grounds ; but all this hindsight did not help us to cultivate the Beisan
Valley. We, on the other hand, had to struggle for years, and pay
heavily, in order to obtain any share at all in the State lands, and then
it was only some seventy-five or eighty thousand dunams, much of it
consisting of the sand dunes of Rishon-le-Zion — ^valueless unless large
sums are sunk in their amelioration.

The pogrom, the suspended immigration and the lost State lands were
on the record at the preliminary meeting of the Actions Committee in
Prague. But what depressed me more than these was my own feeling of
helplessness in the face of the lack of understanding which seemed to
prevail, even among responsible Zionists. For instance, the Actions Com-
mittee adopted a budget of seventeen million five hundred thousand dol-
lars for the coming year, to cover considerable acquisitions of land and
the settlement of large numbers of immigrants, as well as of some who
had come to Palestine before the war and were still awaiting settlement.
But the compilers of this budget unfortunately failed to indicate where
the money was to be found. I knew that no such sum was in sight ; in the
conditions of that time it could not be produced even by superhuman
effort. European Jewries had just not got the money; American Jewry
had yet to be educated to the assumption of so great a responsibility.
True, it was spending a great deal on the relief of distressed Jewish
communities in Europe, but there was no sign yet of any readiness to
divert even a part of these vast sums to the resettlement of European
Jews in Palestine. The Actions Committee budget was, of course, severely
criticized in Congress as unreal, and eventually cut down to 15 per cent
or 20 per cent of the original figure. But this naturally gave rise to deep
disappointment in the ranks of the movement, and we should have
known better than to allow such fantastic figures to be dangled before
the eyes of our constituents.

The Congress did well to bring the movement down to earth, to some
appreciation of the hard facts, and to set our feet on the only path that
could lead to success — ^the path of slow, laborious and methodical work
in Palestine. It formally decided to establish the settlements of Nahalal,
Kfar Yechezkiel, Ain Harod and Tel Yosef, thus beginning the con-
quest of the land — ^and that was worth more than all the rest of the
talk. I rejoiced in these decisions because I knew men who were ready
and waiting to invade the malaria-infested Emek and establish them-
selves and their families there, to face all the risks and hardships of a
pioneering life. I saw my duty for the next five or ten years very clearly ;
it was to help these people make a success of their venture. For their

CLEVELAND AND CARLSBAD 277

success would be of greater political importance than any so-called
‘‘politicar’ concession which we might obtain, after heartbreaking negoti-
ations, from a reluctant Government.

The Congress had opened on a depressed note ; it ended on a note of
optimism. After all, immigration had begun, at the rate of something like
ten thousand a year, and though this was not a very imposing figure it
was not negligible either, considering the conditions in the country. We
knew that a too rapid increase in this stream of immigration would lead
to unemployment, of which there were faint but visible signs already on
the horizon, and therefore the stream had to be stemmed and regulated.

But it was bringing with it the first cholutsim — ^that new and hearten-
ing phenomenon in Jewry. Keen, eager, intelligent, they had trained
themselves to do any kind of physical work in Palestine; they were
determined to let no one else perform the duties, however primitive and
exacting, which attended the laying of the foundations of the National
Home. They would build roads, drain marshes, dig wells, plant trees —
and they faced all the physical dangers and hardships joyfully and un-
flinchingly. Of such were the young men and women I had watched, with
Mond, breaking stones on the Tel Aviv road the previous year.

Much was heard before, during and after the Congress of the non-
rentability of Jewish National Fund land. There was a good deal of
criticism of the first co-operative settlements, which were just beginning
their work. Again, I felt that time was too young to afford any basis for
judgments: these infant enterprises should be given their chance. We
faced the task of converting into peasant farmers an urbanized people,
completely divorced from the soil for hundreds, if not thousands of years,
a people whose physical and intellectual equipment unfitted them for the
hardships of an outdoor life in a barren land whose soil was exhausted
by centuries of misrule and poor husbandry. Moreover, we had not the
means to start our agricultural ventures properly, and our heavily cut
budget made no provision for the inevitable percentage of failures which
occurs in all colonizing work — such as, to take recent instances, the
settlement of British soldiers in Canada or Australia. When we compared
our results with those of the British Dominions (which had adequate
finances, unlimited virgin soil, familiar climates, a friendly population
speaking the same language as the immigrant — ^and no Arab problem)
I think we had, even in those early days, no reason to be ashamed of
the Jewish experiment.

Still, the Jews grumbled, and the non- Jews criticized mercilessly.
British officials and Zionist visitors to Palestine returned to advise us to
put an end to ''all these fancy experiments” in agriculture, and con-
centrate on building up industry and trade — ^in other words, take the
line of least resistance, and relapse into the old Diaspora habit of creat-
ing towns to receive an urbanized immigration. I have already said some-

278

TRIAL AND ERROR

thing, and will have more to say, about my views on the subject of
premature private enterprise. I resisted all this advice strenuously, and
sometimes in my eagerness to defend my point of view I may have been
less than just to the lower-middle-class people who came to settle in
Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, since they too were pioneers, in their
own fashion. They built up hundreds of small industries, investing their
small lifetime savings, brought with difficulty out of Poland or the
Ukraine; and they too were building up the National Home of their
people.

Even so, I still believe that the backbone of our work is and must
always be agricultural colonization. It is in the village that the real soul
of a people — its language, its poetry, its literature, its traditions — springs
up from the intimate contact between man and soil. The towns do no
more than “process’’ the fruits of the villages.

So, for more than a quarter of a century now, it has been given to me
to watch, with a deep and growing exultation, the steady development
of our village life in Palestine. I have watched the Emek’s marshes dry-
ing out, and gradually growing firm enough to support more and more
clusters of red-roofed cottages, whose lights sparkle in the falling dusk
like so many beacons on our long road home. The thought of those
spreading clusters of lights in the dusk has been my reward for many
w’eary months of travel and disappointment in the world outside.

C H AFTER 2 5

The Struggle About the Mandate

Draftmg the Mandate — '"Historic Righf’ or "Historical Con-
nection^^? — Arabs and "Die-Hards^^ Attack Us — The Haycraft
Commission and Report — Lord Northcliffe Turns on Us —
Beaverhrook Joins the Assault — The Arab Delegation in Rome,
Paris, and London — Counteraction — Italy and the Vatican
Have Complaints — "We Fear Your University'' — The Re-
markable Italian Jewish Community — I am Mistaken for Lenin
— Berlin and Walter Rathenau — Parliament Debates the Man-
date — The Churchill White Paper — Trans-Jordan Lopped off
— Our Own Shortcomings — The Stage Set jor Mandate De-
cision — Miracle from Spain — The Mandate Is Unanimously
Ratified.

By the autumn of 1921 I was back in London, having surveyed the
tasks confronting us in Palestine, in America and in Europe. We were
very conscious that though policy had, in principle, been settled for
some time past, the situation in Palestine was almost bound to be uncer-
tain and unsatisfactory as long as the Mandate remained unratified by
the League of Nations. The ratification did not take place until July
1922, and in the interval a good many unforeseen difficulties arose and
had to be overcome — at the cost of numerous journeys between London,
Paris, Geneva and Rome. Besides the political work in connection with
the Mandate, the other main problem which could never be lost sight of
for a moment was the building up of the Keren Hayesod, already estab-
lished in Palestine and America, but either not established at all, or still
in embryo, in most of the European countries. My travels in the winter
of 1921-1922 had thus a double object.

Curzon had by now taken over from Balfour at the Foreign Office,
and was in charge of the actual drafting of the Mandate. On our side
we had the valuable assistance of Mr. Ben V. Cohen, who stayed on
with us in London after most of his fellow-Brandeisists had resigned
from the Executive and withdrawn from the work. Ben Cohen was one
of the ablest draftsmen in America, and he and Curzon’s secretary —
young Eric Forbes-Adam, highly intelligent, efficient and most sym-
pathetic — ^fought the battle of the Mandate for many months. Draft after

279

28 o trial and error

draft was proposed, discussed and rejected, and I sometimes wondered
if we should ever reach a final text. The most serious difficulty arose in
connection with a paragraph in the Preamble — ^the phrase which now
reads: '‘Recognizing the historical connection of the Jews with Pales-
tine/’ Zionists wanted to have it read: "Recognizing the historic rights
of the Jews to Palestine,” But Curzon would have none of it, remarking
dryly: "If you word it like that, I can see Weizmann coming to me every
other day and saying he has a right to do this, that or the other in
Palestine! I won’t have it!” As a compromise, Balfour suggested “his-
torical connection,” and “historical connection” it was.

I confess that for me this was the most important part of the Man-
date. I felt instinctively that the other provisions of the Mandate might
remain a dead letter, e,g., "to place the country under such political,
economic and administrative conditions as may facilitate the develop-
ment of the Jewish National Home.” All one can say about that point,
after more than twenty-five years, is that at least Palestine has not so
far been placed under a legislative council with an Arab majority — ^but
that is rather a negative brand of fulfillment of a positive injunction.
Looking back, I incline to attach even less importance to written “dec-
larations” and “statements” and “instruments” than I did even in those
days. Such instruments are at best frames which may or may not be
filled in. They have virtually no importance unless and until they are
supported by actual performance, and it is more and more to this side
of the work that I have tried to direct the movement with the passing
of the years.

As the drafting of the Mandate progressed, and the prospect of
its ratification drew nearer, we found ourselves on the defensive
against attacks from every conceivable quarter — on our position in
Palestine, on our work there, on our good faith. The spearhead of
these attacks was an Arab delegation from Palestine, which arrived
in London via Cairo, Rome and Paris, in the summer of 1921, and
established itself in London at the Hotel Cecil. Under the leadership
of Musa Kazim Pasha, it ventilated numerous Arab grievances at the
Colonial Office, and also in Parliamentary, press and political circles,
and seemed to find little difficulty in spreading the most fantastic
stories. The delegation served as a rallying point for elements which we
should now describe as “reactionary” or "fascist,” but which we then
spoke of as "the die-hards.” Joynson-Hicks led them in the Commons ;
in the Lords they found able spokesmen in Lord Islington, Lord
Sydenham, and later Lord Raglan, effectively supported in the press
by the Northcliffe and Beaverbrook papers, with the "Bag-and-
Baggage” campaign for reduction of British overseas commitments
in the interests of British economy and the British taxpayer. One
had the impression that many English people were coming to regard

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 2S1

Palestine as a serious liability, a country where Jews rode roughshod
over “the poor Arabs/' and charged the British taxpayer several
shillings in the pound for doing it. Along with this type of argument
went quasi-impartial statements suggesting that the Jewish enterprise
in Palestine was utterly unsound and uneconomic, and that the whole
thing 'was being run by a bunch of impractical idealists 'who did not
know the first thing about colonizing or building up a country.

Well, we were idealists, and we knew we had a lot to learn — and
much of it we could only learn by making our own mistakes. But
we also saw — as our critics apparently did not — that their two
arguments canceled each other out: if the Jewish National Home
was an impractical dream, incapable of realization, it could hardly
present any real danger to Arabs or British, and there would seem
to be no need to do anything about it except leave it to die of inanition.
But nothing seemed further from our adversaries' intentions.

In November 1921, they found fresh ammunition in the Haycraft
Report (the report of the local judicial commission which investigated
the riots of May, 1921) which, while condemning the brutality of the
rioters, and denying most of the absurd allegations against the Jews
in Palestine (e.g., that they were Bolshevists), contrived to leave on
the reader's mind the impression that the root of the difficulty was
a British policy with whch the Arabs were — ^perhaps justifiably —
dissatisfied. The Haycraft Report also implied that the Zionist desire
to dominate in Palestine might provide further ground for Arab re-
sentment. Again there was a curious contradiction: in dealing with
the actual facts which the commission was appointed to investigate,
the report frankly admitted, for instance, that the particularly savage
attack on Hedera was mainly due to the spreading of false rumors
by agitators in Tulkarm and neighboring villages; but it made no
attempt to indicate how and why and through whom these rumors
had been spread. Thus it happened that an important official document
could be held — by those interested in such an interpretation — to sup-
port some of the accusations made against us. It was a situation which
was to recur more than once in the years that followed — in fact, as
often as a commission went out to Palestine to investigate and report
upon “incidents" or complications on the spot. In a sense, the Hay-
craft Report contained the germ of very many of our main troubles
in the last twenty-five years.

The report was, of course, a gift for our opponents, and they made
good use of it. So much confusion was created, so many misstatements
of Zionist aims were made, that we felt driven to issue a full reply.
This was drafted by Leonard Stein, who had by now become our
political secretary in London, and was a most effective piece of work.
But I remember feeling at the time that our opponents were unlikely

282

TRIAL AND ERROR

to pay much heed to the marshaled facts and to the arguments
advanced with such forceful logic ; they were impervious to objective
reasoning on the subject. Now I wonder whether the underlying cause
may not have been a vague anti-Jewish sentiment rather than any
Specific anti-Zionist conviction.

Another gift for our attackers was Lord Northcliffe’s return to
London after a visit to Palestine ‘‘to see for himself.^^ His visit was
brief, his criticisms sharp. He had, during the war, been inclined to
support us, but his Palestine experiences seem to have put him off.
He had, it appears, succeeded in impressing himself most unfavorably
on the few Jewish settlers he met, and the feeling was mutual. It
was told that he happened to arrive in Tel Yosef (then just founded)
about lunchtime. Lunch in a new settlement is apt to be a rather
sketchy affair: people rush in straight from the fields, collect a snack
from the hatch, and dispose of it with small ceremony before rushing
back to their jobs. Lord Northcliffe’s presence in the dining room
passed unnoticed for a time (in itself enough to arouse some resent-
ment), and when it was announced it evoked no great enthusiasm.
Whatever it was, Lord Northcliffe came back with the impression
that Jewish settlers in Palestine were mostly Communists and/or
Bolshevists — and arrogant, aggressive types into the bargain. Still,
he did leave us Philip Graves as Times correspondent in Palestine,
and Graves was a man of much more balanced and moderate views,
though his cautious mind was often critical, and the series of articles
from his pen which appeared in the Times about this period often
damned with faint praise. We cannot forget, however, that we owe
to him a most able and authoritative exposure of the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion.

Once back in London, Lord Northcliffe lost no time in making
his views known. I received an invitation — perhaps I should say
command — ^to lunch with him. I found him with Mr. Maxse, to whom
he was already representing Zionism as a danger to the British
Empire, on the grounds that in his opinion it was a matter of five
hundred thousand Jews (at most) against fifty million Moslems —
and it was lunacy to upset the fifty million Moslems for the sake of
the five hundred thousand Jews. It was useless to challenge this
oversimplified version of the facts : Lord Northcliffe had been to
see for himself — and had returned not to listen, but to talk. After
lunch we adjourned to another room containing a number of very
comfortable easy chairs, and one supereasy chair, to which Lord
Northcliffe promptly gravitated. He placed me on his right and
Maxse on his left, and said: “Now, Maxse represents England; you
are a Jew; I am the umpire!” From this we inferred that we were to
be asked to state our respective cases — ^but not at all! Lord North-

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 283

clifFe proceeded forthwith to tell tis all about it. This conception of
the functions of an umpire was new to me, and suggested that I was
probably wasting my time, so I shortly made my excuses and with-
drew. I daresay Lord Northcliffe was not pleased. Anyhow, though
the Times remained dignified — ^if mistrustful — on the subject of
Palestine, the other NorthclifFe papers — Daily Mail, Evening News,
and so on — launched out into a virulent campaign against us. In
particular a certain Mr, J. M. N. Jeffries succeeded, in a series of
savage articles, in presenting a wholly distorted picture of Jewish life
in Palestine. His conclusion was that the only thing to do was to annul
the Balfour Declaration and scrap the whole British Palestine policy.

The Beaverbrook press was conducting a similar campaign from
a slightly different angle. They incorporated Palestine in their “Bag-
and-Baggage” demand for withdrawal from a number of British
overseas commitments primarily on grounds of economy. While using
roughly the same arguments as the Northcliffe press, they lumped
together the cost to Britain of Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Iraq
(Palestine’s share was, even at this early stage, insignificant — some-
thing like five million dollars annually), and thus suggested that the
ordinary British taxpayer was being heavily mulcted in order to
enable a few East European Jews to oppress and expropriate the
Palestine Arabs. In fact, of course, the upbuilding of Palestine as the
Jewish National Home was not costing the British taxpayer a penny.
About seven million, five hundred thousand dollars a year was at
that time being spent on maintaining the garrison, but that would
in any case have had to be maintained somewhere, and probably cost
less in Palestine than it would have in Egypt.

Another tempting target for the arrows of the press was, of course,
the ^^Rutenberg Concessions” for the harnessing of the Auja and
Jordan rivers, which were made in 1921. All sorts of claimants ap-
peared on the scene, and were sure of good publicity. They were
mostly people who had secured ‘"concessions” from the Turkish
Government, and felt themselves entitled to have those concessions
confirmed by the British. Many of them had friends in Parliament
through whom they could bring pressure to bear on the Government
on the ground that the Rutenberg Concessions were favors granted
to the Jews at the expense of the general interests of Palestine and
of Britain. And this, besides holding up the development of Palestine,
increased the difficulty of our political task.

Through all this maze we still managed somehow to progress, if
with maddening slowness, toward the ratification of the Mandate.
We had some good friends, whose help did much to offset the attacks.
Among them were Mr. Ramsay Macdonald and Lord Milner, both of
whom visited Palestine and returned to speak and write of what they

284 TRIAL AND ERROR

had seen there : Mr. Macdonald with enthusiasm of the Jewish com-
munal settlements, and Lord Milner with knowledge and sympathy
of the great tasks in agriculture, afforestation, industry, transport,
education, and so on, which awaited the Jews in Palestine, and of
the way in which the Jewish community was addressing itself to
them. Lord Milner, at least, had no fears that the Mandate would
involve any noticeable extra burden on the British taxpayer, and
felt confident that such burden as there was would very soon dis-
appear.

Opposition to the Jewish National Home policy was not confined to
England* On its way to London the Arab delegation had stopped off in
Rome and Paris, and in both cities had proved, as it was to prove in
London, a rallying point for reactionary forces. Pressure on the British
Government was therefore to be anticipated from some, at least, of the
Allied governments— though they had already given their endorsement
of the Balfour Declaration and signified their approval in principle of
the Mandate based upon it.

Partly for this reason, and partly in the interests of the Keren H aye-
sod, I found myself committed to visiting a number of European capitals ,*
and since the most serious political opposition to the Balfour Declaration
policy seemed likely to emanate from the Vatican, I decided to begin with
Rome.

We knew that the Latin Patriarch in Jerusalem, Monsignor Bar-
lassina, was strongly opposed to Zionism, and that for some reason he
held us responsible for the unsatisfactory settlement of the question of
the Holy Places. It was in vain that we declared that we were com-
pletely uninterested in this problem, that we fully realized it to be
something to be settled between the Christian powers and the Vatican,
and that if these could not reach a satisfactory agreement among them-
selves it was no fault of ours. When I set out on my round of visits in
Rome, therefore, I had it in mind to try and discover what really was
the trouble about the Holy Places, and in what manner it could be con-
sidered to concern us.

Signor Schanzer, the then Italian Foreign Minister, was a Triestino,
and probably of Jewish descent. I remember an odd talk with him in
which he urged me to do my utmost to bring about a speedy settlement
of the problem of the Holy Places in the sense desired by the Vatican.
I protested in vain that it might be, to say the least, a little tactless for a
Jew to meddle in such matters, but somehow my protestations seemed
unconvincing to him. He was particularly anxious about the Cenacolo —
the Room of the Last Supper — on the outskirts of Jerusalem. My educa-
tion in Church history having been deficient, I did not know why the
Italians laid such stress on the Cenacolo, nor could I understand why
Schanzer, presumably representing a purely secular Italian interest,

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 285

should be such an ardent champion of a cause which one would have
imagined to be primarily the concern of the Vatican. Clearly I had a
great deal to learn in this field, and I decided to prolong my stay.

In due course I received an invitation to call on the Cardinal Secre-
tary of State, Cardinal Gasparri. He had been very well informed by
Monsignor Barlassina, who, as I have said, was no friend of ours. It
happened that my first talk with Cardinal Gasparri took place the day
after an address of mine at the Collegio Romano, which had been at-
tended by representatives of the Italian and international press, as well
as by a number of Italian dignitaries — ^the mayor of Rome, the chief of
police, and so on. I had tried at this meeting to explain what we were
doing in Palestine, and what our aims and aspirations were. The next
morning a full report appeared in the Osservatore Rosnano (the organ
of the Vatican) ; not an unfair report, on the whole, but with a few pin-
pricks. For instance, my statement that for the moment we were not
buying land in Palestine, as we had reserves of land sufficient for the
next ten years or so, appeared in the Osservatore something like this :

Dr. Weizmann stated that the Zionist Organization was in posses-
sion of vast reserves of land, and would not need to expropriate the
Arabs for another ten years.

When I came into His Eminence’s room next morning, he said: “You
made a very interesting speech yesterday.” I replied: “Do you mean
my speech at the Collegio Romano, or my speech in the Osservatore
Romano ?” He smiled and said that one must bear with the journalists,
who sometimes slipped up, and I said that I thought far too highly of
Vatican journalists to attribute to them careless mistakes in reporting.
That point dropped, I thought I had better take my opportunity of
asking what it was that the Vatican really feared from the Zionist move-
ment ; for I remember that Mr. Sokolow had, in audience with His Holi-
ness, given a very full explanation of our aims, and that his explanation
had apparently found favor. It gradually became apparent that His
Eminence was concerned with matters which had to do with the British
administration rather than with the Zionists. He was, for instance, dis-
tressed that members of various nursing and teaching Orders, and other
Catholic emissaries to Palestine, were finding some difficulty in getting
visas. I tried to explain that we had nothing to do with the granting of
visas to travelers, but clearly His Eminence still suspected that the
Zionist Organization was, in some obscure fashion, a branch of the
Palestine Government, and “could use its influence” if it chose. I spent
some minutes trying to make the position clear, but I am not at all sure
whether I had any success, either on this point, or on the question of
the Holy Places.

At another interview with Cardinal Gasparri, when the talk had been

286

TRIAL AND ERROR

on more general lines, and I had been giving some account of the work
we were actually doing and preparing to do in Palestine — ^agricultural
settlement, drainage, afforestation, medical work, education— he indi-
cated that the colonization work, and so on, caused him no anxiety, but
added: ‘'Cest votre tmiversite que je crams'’ (it is your university that
I fear). Which gave me food for thought

I saw a number of Italian statesmen and officials, including the Duke
of Cesaro, Signor d’Amandola (the Minister for the Colonies), Prime
Minister Luzzati, Signor Contarini of the Foreign Office. I was received
in audience by the King, who spoke appreciatively of his acquaintance
with Dr. Herzl (whose photograph stood on his desk). But the question
I had come to ask: What exactly was the reason for Italian and Vatican
opposition to Zionism? remained unanswered. Nor could I discover to
my own satisfaction why the purely religious issue of the Holy Places
should arouse so much interest in Italian political circles — and in French
ones, too. There were no Holy Places in Palestine to which the Jews
laid actual physical claim — except, perhaps, Rachel’s tomb, which was at
no time a matter of controversy. The Wailing Wall we did not own, and
never had owned since the destruction of the Temple; controversy was
later to arise over the Jewish prayers conducted there, but at this time
there was no suggestion even of that. Yet the resentment felt by the
various Christian communities in Palestine — and especially by the
Catholic communities — at the choice of a Protestant Mandatory Power
lent a special edge to the discussion of the question of the Holy Places,
and we could not escape from it. Our disclaimers fell on deaf ears.

I can make a happy digression at this point. My stay in Italy brought
^me, for the first time, into close contact with the Italian Jewish com-
mumtyjr and with Italian Zionism. The latter had always held for me the
fascinatigit of mystery. None of the motives for Zionism which held good
in other countries applied in the case of the Italian Jews. Jewish emanci-
pation in Italy had been complete for generations. The community was a
small one, but its members took an active part in Italian life — political,
economic, artistic, scientific — ^and were to all intents and purposes indis-
tinguishable from their fellow-citizens, except that they went to syna-
gogue instead of to Mass. In metropolitan Italy they numbered no more
than some fifty thousand of a total population of forty million or so. Of
these fifty thousand, some fifteen thousand lived, curiously enough, in a
sort of voluntary ghetto in Rome, spoke a language which was virtually
Italian, with some Hebrew and Arabic embroideries, and pursued vari-
ous minor crafts or kept small shops. But the rest of the community .was
assimilated to a degree.

Yet, under the influence of Peretz Chayes, the brilliant scholar who
later became Chief Rabbi of Vienna, a group of ygung people had founded
an Italian Zionist Organization. They had b^^ik in Florence, where

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 287

lived a young and ardent prophet of Zionism, Arnoldo Pacifici; and
when they formed their society they went the whole way: they spoke
Hebrew, they began to prepare themselves for life in Palestine; many
of them — including Pacifici himself — ^became strictly orthodox; they
edited one of the best Zionist papers of the day — Israel, Numerically
insignificant, they were by the depth of their conviction and their
absolute sincerity a great moral force. And though at first the com-
munity at large was inclined to resent them, they were so tactful, and at
the same time so transparently honest in their faith, that even con-
vinced anti-Zionists came to look on them as something in the nature of
'^apostles” of the Jewish revival, and to respect, if they could not under-
stand, them.

Early leaders of this group, besides Pacifici, were men like Dante
Lattes, Enzo Sereni, nephew of Angelo Sereni, head of the Rome Jew-
ish community, and David Prato, later Rabbi of Alexandria. With the
last named I toured the cities of Italy— Florence, Pisa, Milan, Genoa,
Leghorn, Padua. It was a great experience for me to meet ancient Jewish
families with a long intellectual tradition (sometimes deriving from
Spain), a wide culture, and an exquisite hospitality. Amid all the suffer-
ing of the last few years, there is for me a special poignancy in the
destruction which has overtaken the Italian Jewish community — ^though
a number of Italian Jews have been fortunate enough to reach Palestine.
They had given so much to Italy, and so much to their own people.
Before World War I, on my very first visit to Italy, friends had pointed
out to me with pride that the Italian cabinet contained four Jews: Luz-
zati, Ottolenghi, Sonnino, and — I think — ^Titoni. Then the mayor of
Rome was also a Jew. The greatest living Italian mathematician, Lev?
Civita, was a Jew; the great Italian firm of contractors w]:;a€^ Vas
charged with the maintenance of the harbor of Alexandria, waiit Jewish
firm. In short, the Italian Jewish community seemed to be a community
of sujets elite. And the elite of that community, accustomed to enjoy
in Italy every material and social advantage a man can ask, were turning
their eyes to Palestine. I could not explain it. I could only thank God.

My tour with Dr. Prato was mainly in the interests of the Keren
Hayesod, but also a little in the hope of winning at least some sections of
Italian public opinion over to a more tolerant view of Zionism. I was
beginning to attach considerable importance to Italy ; I saw it as a lead-
ing Mediterranean Power with extensive contacts in the Levant, under
a Government which was taking more than a passing interest in our
affairs. Gradually it was becoming clear to me that Italian official circles
feared that Zionism was merely a cloak for the creation of a British
imperial outpost in the Levant ; they were thus very ready to press the
Vatican contentions wijfcregard to the Holy Places.

We had a rather ^i^fQous few weeks, and afterward my wife and I

288

TRIAL AND ERROR

took a short rest in Capri, The island was at that time something of a
center for Russian emigres ; they frequented the smaller cafes and restau-
rants on the promenade, and in many of these the only language com-
monly heard was Russian. One morning, as we walked into one of them,
I heard a whispered aside: *^Here comes our Minister,^^ I was not as
puzzled as I might have been, for it was not the first time I had been
mistaken for Lenin: the same thing had happened not long before in
Genoa, during the Economic Conference, the first Western European
Conference to be attended by representatives of the Soviet Government.
I had been walking with a friend — a high official of the Genoa munici-
pality — ^when we noticed that our footsteps had for some time been
dogged by a policeman. My friend stopped, and asked him why we were
being followed. The answer was : “We have received instructions, sir,
not to let the Russian delegation out of our sight. I believe you have M.
Lenin with you.'’ It took quite some time, and all my friend's official
authority, to persuade the policeman that I had no connection with
Lenin, beyond a remote physical resemblance.

Capri was exquisite, but at the back of my mind were always London
and Jerusalem. The reports were disturbing. In London the campaign
against the Mandate was in full swing, and from Jerusalem came dis-
tressing news of inadequate income, cut budgets, settlers leading lives of
incredible hardship — ^without beds, with insufficient food, without tents
in the quagmire that was still the Emek. I had for the time being done
what I could on the financial front in America — and anyhow, I could not
leave Europe again until tlie Mandate was ratified, I therefore decided
that the Keren Hayesod must make a start in the principal European
Jewish communities, and my next port of call was Berlin, where a Ger-
man Zionist Federation was just beginning to make some headway.

My previous contacts with the Berlin Jewish community had been
slight, and I was relieved to find a warm welcome, and to hear Herr
Dernburg, a former Minister for the Colonies, paying high tribute to
our colonization work in Palestine and to the new methods we were
developing there. In such an atmosphere I felt that the German Keren
Hayesod would soon become a real prop to the work — and such, in fact,
proved to be the case. From the outset it owed much to the devotion of
Kurt Blumenfeld, and to the keen mind and warm heart of Oskar
Wasserman.

One of the more vivid impressions I retain of this visit is that of my
talk with Walther Rathenau, whom I met one evening at Einstein's
house. He plunged at once into eloquent argument against Zionism —
much on the lines of his book, Hear, 0 Israel. The gist of what he had
to say was that he was a Jew, but felt entirely German and was devoting
all his energy to the building of German industry and the redeeming of
Germany’s political position. He deplored any attempt to turn the Jews

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 289

of Germany “into a foreign body on the sands of the Mark of Branden-
burg’’ — ^that was all he could see in Zionism. His attitude was, of course,
all too typical of that of many assimilated German Jews; they seemed to
have no idea that they were sitting on a volcano; they believed quite
sincerely that such difficulties as admittedly existed for German Jews
were purely temporary and transitory phenomena, primarily due to the
influx of East European Jews, who did not fit into the framework of
German life, and thus offered targets for anti-Semitic attacks. The “real”
German Jew would be immune from, above, all that. ... By no stretch
of the imagination could Rathenau be described as an East European
immigrant; all the same, not many months were to pass before he fell
at the hands of “Nazi” assassins. Not even then did his Jewish friends
and followers see the writing on the wall.

From Berlin we went to Paris, again mainly on Keren Hayesod busi-
ness, though I knew that the proceeds from France would not be very
considerable. The Fund there was under the able direction of Professor
Hadamard, Dr. Zadoc Kahn, and one or two other leading French Jews
— ^by no means all of them Zionists. The Foundation Fund proved from
the beginning a sort of bridge, or halfway house, for Jews who, while
interested in Palestine and anxious to help, hesitated to throw their
whole weight behind the Zionist movement because of its “political im-
plications.” They would help pay for the work, but they were not pre-
pared to assume any responsibility for its political, social or moral out-
come. With some of these people, in France as elsewhere, there may also
have been the underlying idea that it might be prudent to direct future
Jewish immigration away from the Western countries, lest such immi-
gration provoke a recrudescence of anti-Semitism.

For a French fund — French voluntary funds are seldom very successful
— ^the Keren Hayesod did fairly well, and I was not unduly disappointed
with my visit from the financial point of view. I, of course, profited from
my stay in Paris to see one or two official people — M. deMonzie, and
General Gouraud among them. With the General I discussed the then
vexing question of the northern frontiers of Palestine, though without
conspicuous success, since the French tended to regard Palestine as
“southern Syria,” and Syria as a whole as a French sphere of influence,
hence to resent the separation of Palestine, and to regard with special
suspicion any attempt to modify its northern frontier. I tried to convince
General Gouraud of the importance to Palestine of the waters of the
river Litani, but could arouse no interest, and came away with the rather
depressed feeling that for him, as for the Italians, Zionism was nothing
more than camouflage for British imperialism.

From Paris we returned to London, to find debates on Palestine pend-
ing in both Houses of Parliament. Lord Sydenham, Lord Islington and
Lord Raglan led the attack in the Lords, and in spite of a rather lively

TRIAL AND ERROR

290

debate, their motion for the repeal of the Balfour Declaration won by a
substantial majority. In the Commons, with such champions as Mr.
Churchill and Major Ormsby-Gore, we had better luck, and a similar
motion was heavily defeated. Still, I was greatly distressed by the out-
come of the debate in the House of Lords. I went to see Mr. Balfour at
Sheringham, and expressed my perturbation. He advised me not to
take it too seriously, saying: ‘'What does it matter if a few foolish lords
passed such a motion ?”

Against this background, the London Zionist Executive was engaged
in correspondence and discussions with the Colonial Office on various
matters arising in connection with the final text of the Mandate. The
volume of criticism directed against the Mandate policy had convinced
the Government of the need for a detailed commentary, and this took the
form of a White Paper published in June 1922 (the ''Churchill White
Paper”). The main memorandum, we thought, was probably drafted by
Sir Herbert Samuel, though it compared none too favorably with some
of his Palestine speeches and was clearly dictated by a desire to placate
the Arabs as far as possible. It was as little realized in 1922 as it is today
that the real opponents of Zionism can never be placated by any diplo-
matic formula: their objection to the Jews is that the Jews exist, and in
this particular case, that they desire to exist in Palestine. It made, there-
fore, little difference whether our immigration was large or small : pro-
tests were as vociferous over a hundred immigrants as over thousands.
This main memorandum was communicated to us in advance of publica-
tion, and we were invited to signify our acceptance of the policy defined
therein.

The Churchill White Paper was regarded by us as a serious whittling
down of the Balfour Declaration. It detached trans-Jordan from the
area of Zionist operation, and it raised the subject of a legislative coun-
cil. But it began with a reaffirmation of "the Declaration of November 2,
1917, which is not susceptible of change.” It continued: "A Jewish
National Home will be founded in Palestine” and "the Jewish people
will be in Palestine as of right and not on sufferance.” Further, "Im-
migration will not exceed the economic capacity of the country to absorb
new arrivals.”

In short, it limited the Balfour Declaration to Palestine west of the
Jordan, but it established the principle of "economic absorptive ca-
pacity.” In addition, it was also made clear to us that confirmation of
the Mandate would be conditional on our acceptance of the policy as
interpreted in the White Paper, and my colleagues and I therefore had
to accept it, which we did, though not without some qualms. Jabotinsky,
at that time a member of the Zionist Executive, was arriving from
America on the very afternoon when we had to signify our acceptance
of the statement of policy. A messenger was sent to meet the boat at

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 291

Southampton with a copy of the document and of our letter of accept-
ance, in order that his agreement might be obtained in time. I was more
than a little nervous about his reaction, but curiously enough he raised
no serious objection, merely remarking that the White Paper, if carried
out honestly and conscientiously, would still afford us a framework for
building up a Jewish majority in Palestine, and for the eventual emer-
gence of a Jewish State. Subsequent events showed his view to have
been right: so long as, through immigration and the investment of
capital, the Jews were able to develop the country, its '‘absorptive
capacity” would continue to grow, and immigration would show a
steady rise. It was only when the Government interfered with the ac-
tivities of the community with the definite intention of hampering such
development that the growth of the National Home was impeded. We
know now, though we were not so sure in 1922, that the principle of
"absorptive capacity” could, if generously applied, have been the key to
the rapid and stable expansion of the Yishuv ; we also know that it was
in fact applied in such a spirit as to prove a stumbling block to Jewish
enterprise. For "absorptive capacity” does not grow wild on the rocks
and dunes of Palestine; it must be created, and its creation calls for
effort, enthusiasm, imagination — and capital.

It follows that in the expansion of "absorptive capacity” the economic
policy of the Government is no less important than its political policy,
and in the economic field the motto of the Palestine Government was
from the outset "safety first.” In fairness I must add that in the early
years after the ratification of the Mandate, great opportunities really
did open out before us in Palestine, but we could not take full advantage
of them while the time served because of lack of really substantial sup-
port from the Jews of Europe and America. Two other factors slowed
down our early progress in Palestine. First, as I have already said,
Russian Jewry had for our purposes ceased to exist, and Polish Jewry
was broken and impoverished. Second, our methods of colonization
were still in the experimental stage: we were feeling our way by trial
and error toward a new system, for it was clear that the colonies of
Baron Edmond, and even some of the early Zionist colonies, were in-
sufficient to justify a speedy advance in agricultural colonization. We
were hesitating between the kvutzah (communal) and the moshav (co-
operative smallholders) settlements. In the Emek we had started with
Nahalal, which is a moshav; Ain Harod, which followed shortly after-
ward, is a large kvutzah.

When the signatures of the Zionist Executive were appended to the
letter of acceptance, the stage was set for the formal submission of the
Mandate for ratification ; but ratification itself was by no means a fore-
gone conclusion. By the League’s constitution. Council decisions had to

TRIAL AND ERROR

292

be unanimous, and we were not certain of the attitude of the representa-
tives of some of the states which had seats on it.

In states with a fair number of Jews it was possible to enlist their aid
in winning- over the sympathy of the governments. In the case of France,
the Jewish population could argue in our favor. We could turn to the
Jews of Italy in the same expectation. But there was Spain. There were
practically no Jews in Spain. The story of our relationship with Spain
is a long and bloody one. The absence of a significant Jewish community
in Spain has something to do with it. There was Brazil. Our numbers
in Brazil were insignificant. Yet as far as our fate in Palestine was con-
cerned, the votes of Brazil and Spain were each equal to the vote of
England.

The Palestine Mandate came up for ratification only on the last day
of the League Council meeting (Saturday, July 24, 1922), in London,
and up to the last day we w^ere uncertain of what would happen. We
weighed every possibility and looked on every side for help. We re-
membered then that when, in 1918, we laid the foundations of the
Hebrew University in Jerusalem, there came a congratulatory telegram
from a professor of the University of Madrid. To this man we turned
for help; and he brought all his influence to bear on his friends that
they might in turn urge the Government to act in our favor.

This Spanish professor was a marrano (a descendant of the crypto-
Jews of the time of the Inquisition), and most of the friends he enlisted
were also marranos. Suddenly we discovered a great deal of unexpected
and — at the moment — inexplicable sympathy in Spain. Members of the
learned societies, the higher clergy, prominent members of the Spanish
nobility, received the local delegation in the most friendly fashion. Mean-
while, in London, we called on the Spanish representative on the
Council, and it chanced that he was to be the President of the session
at which our fate was to be decided. We said to him: “Here is Spain’s
opportunity to repay in part that long-outstanding debt which it owes
to the Jews. The evil which your forefathers were guilty of against us
you can wipe out in part.” Whether it was our plea, whether it was the
pressure from Madrid, the Spanish representative promised us his help,
with Brazil as well as with his own country, and kept his word.

At the eleventh hour the Papal Nuncios tried to get the Secretariat of
the League to postpone this item on the agenda, I happened to be in
M. Viviani’s rooms in the Hyde Park Hotel (M. Viviani was the
French representative on the Council), when Signor Ceretti called on
him, and asked his help in obtaining the postponement. There was, said
Signor Ceretti, an important document due from the Vatican, M. Viviani
introduced me and said : “As far as I am concerned, I have no objection
to the postponement, but it is for this gentleman to decide.” I said that
there had been delay enough, and if we waited till Monday or later, who

THE STRUGGLE ABOUT THE MANDATE 295

knew what differences would arise around the Council table. Signor
Ceretti, who did not at all like M. Viviani’s trick of making me the
responsible party, heard me out, then bounced from the room in high
dudgeon. M. Viviani smiled at me and said: ''Quand les pretres de
village se mettent d jaire de la politique , ils font des gaffes^^ (when
village priests take to politics they always make howlers).

So on the Saturday morning Mr. Balfour introduced the subject of
the ratification of the Palestine Mandate. Everything went off smoothly,
and with the unanimous vote of ratification there ended the first chapter
of our long political struggle.

CHAPTER 26

Trial and Error

Realism and Unrealism in the Zionist Debates — Fred Kisch
Enters Zionist Work — Ruppin and the Collectives — Chaim
Arlosoroff — The Lean Years — Transforming a People — Agri-
cultural Foundations — The Attack on the Kvutzoth — '^Capi-
talist'’ Versus "Working-Class" Immigration — I Warn against
Economic "Ghettoism" in Palestine — Land Speculation —
Chaiutzim in Tel Aviv for Rosh Hashanah.

The Annual Conference of the World Zionist Organization — ^the
smaller representative gathering which met in the alternate years
between Congresses — began its sessions in Carlsbad on August 25,
1922, a month after the ratification of the Mandate. Its debates
followed a pattern with which I was to become very familiar in the
ensuing years, at Conferences and Congresses.

My report was followed, naturally — ^and properly — by adverse, as
well as favorable comment. Criticism of the Churchill White Paper
was particularly sharp, but was to a certain extent, I thought, unreal ;
for it concentrated on its negative and ignored its positive aspects,
emphasized the theoretical and minimized the practical. I remember
one delegate who compared the White Paper at great length and most
unfavorably with “the charter” — ^that traditional object of Zionist
aspiration in Herzlian days, the international document which was
to “give us” Palestine. I had to point out the basic difference between
the two documents, namely, that the White Paper existed, the charter
did not. And the White Paper gave us the opportunity for great
creative work in Palestine.

In my report I had to devote much space to conditions in Pales-
tine, and these were not commensurate with the political victory we
had just scored. In spite of the smallness of our immigration there
were already some fifteen hundred to two thousand unemployed in
Palestine — a heavy proportion of our population. It was my painful
duty to insist that no amount of diplomatic success could neutralize
this fact, and that for it we had no one to blame but ourselves.
Constructive criticism was needed: not belittlement of the terms of
the White Paper, but indication of methods by which those terms

294

TRIAL AND ERROR 295

could be taken advantage of in order to expand the Jewish Home-
land.

There were, fortunately, constructive critics, men like Arthur
Ruppin, Shmarya Levin and Chaim Arlosorofif — ^the last a young
rising force of whom I shall have more to say — who emphasized the
great possibilities of the moment, and stressed the need for con-
centrating on the improvement of the financial resources of the
movement, and for attracting new forces from among those Jews
who had hitherto stood aside. Ruppin put it succinctly as follows:
Zionist work rested on three pillars: the sympathy of the enlight-
ened world, an understanding with the Arabs, and the devotion and
single-mindedness of the Jewish people itself. While we might have
little control over the first two, the last depended entirely upon
ourselves.

I left the Conference more than ever convinced that for many years
to come my life would be divided between Palestine, where the
actual work had to be got under way as soon as possible, and the
great Western communities which would have to provide the bulk
of the funds for it.

The Palestine Executive was by that time gradually consolidating
its position, but it was sadly weak in its contacts with the adminis-
tration. Until August 1922, our mainstay on this front had been the
invaluable Dr. Eder, but he told us at the Conference in Carlsbad
that he would shortly have to return to his medical work in London,
which he had neglected too long. There, he promised, he would
give us such help as he could, and up to the time of his death his
wise and experienced mind was at the service of the London Exec-
utive. To replace him in Palestine was not a simple matter.

In this difficulty I turned to General Macdonogh of Military Intel-
ligence, a devoted friend of the Zionist movement, in the hope that he
might be able to suggest someone shortly to be released from his depart-
ment. It was General Macdonogh who had arranged my trip to Gibraltar
described toward the end of Book One of these memoirs. I explained
to him the complicated nature of the proposed assignment: we needed
a man belonging to both worlds, English as well as Jewish ; and on the
Jewish side he had to be willing and able to understand and co-operate
with the Eastern Jews who would form the bulk of our immigrants as
well as with the Westerners who would supply most of the funds for
the work. The General brought up the name of Colonel Fred Kisch, with
whom I had had fleeting contact precisely in connection with my Gib-
raltar trip. During most of the war Kisch had been with the engineers
in Mesopotamia, but during a brief convalescence had been attached to
intelligence. After the war, Kisch was stationed in Paris, and his work

2 g 6 TRIAL AND ERROR

was connected with the drafting of some of the peace treaties. Mac-
donogh recommended him warmly.

In my first long conversation with Kisch I realized at once that his
chief had been right in thinking that he had many of the qualities needed.
He was completely British in upbringing, but came of a family which
already had some connections with Zionism. His father, Hermann
Kisch, was an old Chovav Zion. He was therefore not entirely a
stranger to our problems, even though his life as an engineer officer
had so far lain apart from us. I explained frankly to him the scope, the
difficulties and the complications of the task which would lie before
him if he came to us, and made no secret of the fact that he might
easily fall between two stools : the Jews might not accept him because he
was too much of an Englishman, while the British might come to
regard him — in spite of his distinguished military career as an English-
man '"gone native.” I told him that he would need a lot of courage,
self-discipline and self-sacrifice, and would most probably get little
satisfaction out of it. I also advised him not to decide until he had
actually seen Palestine and got to know some of the people with whom
he would have to live and work for years to come in a rather narrow
circle.

Kisch made only one condition : that I should personally initiate him
into his w^ork. So it came about that we set out for Palestine together
in November 1922, and I was able to watch over his first steps in the
new environment. They were very cautious. I soon saw that I had made
an excellent choice. Some of his senior colleagues, particularly Mr.
Ussishkin, did little to make the job easier for him, but Kisch, once he
had seen the country and the people, was so fascinated by the possibil-
ities of the job that he was not to be deterred. Almost his first act on
settling in Palestine was to make arrangements for a daily Hebrew
lesson, so as to understand the Palestinians and be able to make himself
understood without an interpreter. His next was to make a careful
survey of the country. He had the advantage of being well acquainted
with Sir Herbert Samuel, on wffiose warm support and encouragement
he could count, and thus started on his new career under favorable
auspices. For the first few months he served as political officer to the
Executive, without formal status, but at the thirteenth Congress, in the
summer of 1923, he was elected to the Executive, and continued to
serve on it until he resigned in 1931, following my defeat at the Con-
gress of that year.

The story of those nine years he has told for himself in his Palestine
Diary. They were years of absorbing interest and very considerable
difficulty — ^years of foundation laying, Kisch showed himself to be
devoted, painstaking and resourceful to a degree, and made a great
contribution to the development of the Jewish National Home in its

TRIAL AND ERROR 297

early formative stages. As time went on, the Jews of Palestine, and of
the movement outside, came to know him and to appreciate him. But
in proportion as his authority grew with the Yishuv, it diminished at
Government House, and, more especially, among the lower strata of
British officialdom in Palestine. But this in no way impaired Kisch’s
morale; he was not to be deflected from his chosen road. After his
resignation from the Executive he settled in Palestine, and only left
his beautiful home on Carmel to rejoin the Royal Engineers at the out-
break of the Second World War. He served wdth great distinction as
chief engineer of the Eighth Army, and died in the front line before
Tunis on April ii, 1943,

Kisch's arrival in Palestine meant much to me personally. For the
first time there was somebody with whom to share the work which,
since Eder’s resignation, had been my own responsibility ; someone who
could also go to America and talk to the assimilated Jews there as man
to man — and from them get the respect due to an ofRcer high in the
British military hierarchy. Indeed, he was better able to talk to them
than I was, for he did not bear the stigma of being an East European
Jew; and his work with the Western assimilated Jews was always emi-
nently successful.

It was a good thing that it was so, for the years 1923-1924 saw the
beginning of Palestine’s first postwar depression and, as I have already
recounted, our travels to America and various European capitals took
place against a background — of which we were ceaselessly conscious —
of inadequate income, unpaid teachers and officials in Palestine, settle-
ment work held up for lack of funds, settlers short of the niost ele-
mentary necessities, and the ever-present threat of serious unemploy-
ment. Gradually, as the various branches of the Fund got under way,
larger amounts trickled in; but the increase in those early years was
very slow, and anxiety lest the utmost we could do should prove “too
little and too late” dogged our every footstep.

Another man who carried a heavy burden at that time, and carried
it magnificently, was Arthur Ruppin. He helped found our colonies
in a manner which set an example not only for Palestine, but for many
other countries. The human problem that faced us was the highly com-
plex one of absorbing into agriculture immigrants who were by nature
and training urban, and who had been divorced all their lives, like their
ancestors for hundreds of^years, from agricultural pursuits and tradi-
tions. Our material was, in fact, what our enemies sometimes called
“the sweepings of the ghetto.”

These men and women had to be trained, and prepared to lead new
lives in a strange climate, on a soil neglected and abused for centuries.
And this had to be done at a time in human history when the prevailing
tendency everywhere was in the opposite direction — a marked drift

208 TRIAL AND ERROR

away from the village and into the town. So we were working against
the stream— ‘trying to set the clock back” (another favorite phrase of
our opponents). And our income was both limited and uncertain. At
best the results of agricultural colonization are slow to mature ; faced
with the task of the rapid absorption of considerable numbers of people,
one would naturally turn to urban industrial development as the easier
course. I have already told of the conflict which therefore developed
between those of us who thought that the first task of the Zionists was
to create industries and develop towns, and those who, like myself,
were convinced that without a solid agricultural basis there could be
no firm foundation for a Jewish culture, or for the Jewish way of life,
or even for a Jewish economy. As immigration into Palestine pro-
ceeded, this difference of outlook became more acute; by 1923-1924 the
debate was in full swing.

It was Ruppin who, undaunted by the storm of polemics which raged
about him, and the abuse to which he was subjected, calmly pursued
his agricultural program in the teeth of every difficulty. If today Jewish
Palestine can proudly review the sons and daughters of some three
hundred agricultural settlements, this is largely due to Ruppin’s fore-
sight and obduracy, and his profound understanding of the East Euro-
pean Jew. Himself a Westerner, his sympathetic insight enabled him to
find ways and means of adapting the East European mentality to the
hard conditions of Palestine agriculture.

It was in the collective settlement, in the kvufsah, that Ruppin found
the form that best served both as training ground for newcomers to
the land and as a unit able to establish and maintain itself in remote
and unsettled parts of the country. Roads were few and bad in those
early days, and new settlements had to face months and years of virtual
isolation. The solitary settler, or the small village of independent farm-
ers, could not have existed in the conditions then prevailing.

But the “collectives” had to face an extremely hostile section of
Zionist and general public opinion. A great deal of nonsense was talked
and written about them by opponents, both within the movement and
outside of it. We were told that they were “Communist” (i.e,, Bolshe-
vist) cells; that men and women were herded together in them, leading
lives of sexual promiscuity; that they were irreligious, atheistic, sub-
versive — in short, sinks of iniquity scattered up and down the Holy
Land. Such “criticisms” could only come from people who had never
been inside a kvutsah, or what was worse, had been inside one for half
an hour. With the passing of years, and the gradual increase in the
number of people who had visited them, ideas began to change. Travel-
ers returning from Palestine had, and have, nothing but praise for the
communal villages, the life their members lead, and the work they are
doing. These units are based on the principles of co-operative buying

TRIAL AND ERROR 299

and selling, self-Iabor and the national ownership of land. Fifty years
ago all these ideas sounded like dreams; today, in Palestine, they are
solid economic reality. The settlements are firmly rooted, conveniently
as well as pleasantly designed ; the settlers are robust, cheerful, keen on
their jobs. They love the country, and are bringing up a young genera-
tion proud of their agricultural skill, eager, upstanding, independent —
young men and women who have shed all the attributes of the ghetto
and acquired those of a normal, healthy, self-respecting peasant class.

The way has not been easy. For lack of funds the work was pro-
longed and made more costly, and much unnecessary suffering was
caused. Often on my early visits to new settlements my heart ached
with the knowledge that the settlers were doing their utmost to spare
me any real perception of their daily difficulties. I heard no word of
complaint, but I read in the eyes of settlers more than they could have
put into words. I was particularly touched by the efforts they made —
for instance in Nahalal and Ain Harod — ^to comfort me, and to assure
me that ''better times would surely come.’^

What made things harder still was the accusation that Ruppin and
the settlers were doctrinaires, interested more in proving a theory than
in getting results. The opposite was the truth; Ruppin was interested
precisely in practical results. It was his contention that the kvuizah
cost less per settler than any other form of colonization. It was also
more useful as a training school for men and women new to the land
and to the village life. It met to a very great extent one of the principal
difficulties in adapting town dwellers to rural life, namely, the loneliness
in the early stages. It was, in addition, more capable of defending itself
when new settlements had to be established in isolated areas. Twenty-
five years have proved that Ruppin was right.

Together with Ruppin worked Elazari-Volcani, who is still at the
head of the Agricultural Experimental Station in Rehovoth. Between
them and their colleagues they elaborated, after many trials and errors,
and in the face of innumerable difficulties, the most suitable type of
agriculture for Palestine, namely, mixed farming.

There was an organic connection between Ruppin’s outlook on prac-
tical matters and his association with me in the "parliamentary” struggle
in the Congresses. Shmarya Levin's support of me was equally con-
sistent and effective, but had other roots. In the years which elapsed
since my student days in Berlin, I had grown to love and admire his
great personality and apostolic devotion to Zionist work. Somehow,
without words, without preliminary agreement, we always found our-
selves, by instinct, on the same side of the fence. It was so in the days
of the great controversy with Herzl on what was then called "political
Zionism'^ — ^and it was so in the Zionist Congress debates for many
years after the ratification of the Mandate. Still another pillar of strength

300

TRIAL AND ERROR

on our side in this struggle was Eliezer Kaplan, who in later years
became the treasurer of the Jewish Agency and exercised a powerful
influence in the ranks of labor.

Chaim Arlosoroff, wLom I have mentioned as another stanch sup-
porter of my view of Zionist work, was by far the youngest of us. He
was a man of brilliant mind, and he was particularly fitted to present
our philosophy of Zionism to the younger generation. He did it with
great zest and power and with indefatigable energy. It was a privilege
to watch him at work. He became later the political officer of the
Executive — this was in the time of the AVauchope administration ^but
already at the Congresses and Conferences of 1922 and on, he was one
of the leading spirits. He was merciless in his attacks on the extremist
group, wdiich later crystallized into the Revisionist faction.

Arlosoroff had received an excellent education, and his Jewish back-
ground was solid. He w'as one of the few who knew the East and the
"West equally well, and was therefore most suitable for the office which
he filled. He was fundamentally good natured, but did not suffer fools
gladly, and was severe in his attacks on his opponents. But he took as
well as gave. His brilliant career was cut short in 1935 by an assassin.
He was murdered in dastardly fashion late one night on the seashore
of Tel Aviv. His death left a gap which has not been adequately filled
until the present.

The controversy had not yet reached, in 1922 and 1923, the fury
which was to characterize it later, but it was already very lively. The
year 1923 saw the beginnings of a change in the character of our im-
migration. The early immigrants had been preponderantly of the chalutc
type. In 1923 a new regulation offered settlement visas to anyone who
could show possession of twenty-five hundred dollars — ^this was called
''the capitalist’’ category — and gave a much needed opportunity to
many Russian Jews stranded in Poland after the war. These new im-
migrants were permitted over and above those who received “labor
certificates/' And so the immigration figures rose month by month.
So, unfortunately, did the unemployment figures, though much more
slowly. I was uneasy. True, a considerable amount of capital was being
brought into the country by these small capitalists, but openings in
industry, trade and commerce were as yet limited, and the numerous
small shops which seemed to spring up overnight in Tel Aviv and
Haifa caused me no little worry. These people were, as I have indicated,
not of the chalutz type, and some of them were little disposed to pull
their weight in a new country. A few, in their struggle for existence,
showed antisocial tendencies ; they seemed never to have been Zionists,
and saw no difference between Palestine as a country of immigration
and, for instance, the United States. Many of them had no knowledge
of Hebrew, and it was soon being said, rather ruefully, that at this rate

TRIAL AND ERROR

301

Tel Aviv would soon be a Yiddish-speaking town. Even to the casual
observer, the new immigration carried with it the atmosphere of the
ghetto. In the end, I felt that I had to give warning. I had to give it
many times, in fact; and its character may be gathered from a speech
I made in Jerusalem in October 1924.

I said, among other things: ‘When one leaves the Emek and comes
into the streets of Tel Aviv, the whole picture changes. The rising
stream of immigration delights me, and I am delighted, too, that the
ships should bring these thousands of people who are prepared to risk
their life’s savings in the Jewish National Home. Nor do I underrate
the importance of this immigration for our work of reconstruction. Our
brothers and sisters of Djika and Nalevki” — I was referring to typical
ghetto districts of Warsaw — “are flesh of our flesh and blood of our
blood. But we must see to it that we direct this stream and do not
allow it to deflect us from our goal. It is essential to remember that we
are not building our National Home on the model of Djika and Nalevki.
The life of the ghetto we have always known to be merely a stage on
our road; here we have reached home, and are building for eternity.”

This speech earned me the hatred of a great many Polish Jews, par-
ticularly of the Misrachi type — z. hatred which I have never lived down.
I daresay I might have put it more tactfully, but I felt too strongly to
mind. Naturally, such statements got me into hot water: the new im-
migrants, with their three or four or five thousand dollars each, con-
sidered themselves just as good as the men from Daganiah and Nahalal,
and I was accused of taking sides, and discriminating between one type
of immigration and another. It was not that I did not realize the im-
portance of the small capitalist for Palestine’s economy; their industry,
diligence and frugality were invaluable assets. But I feared that in the
early stages of our growth a too-high proportion of them might unduly
weight the balance. I feared that too many of them would meet with
disappointment in an unfamiliar country, lose their small savings, and
be driven to return to Poland or Rumania. And that would have been
a catastrophe. In fact, something of the sort did happen, though on a
small scale; but small as it was, we were not to escape its dire conse-
quences.

The most vicious of the forms in which the “ghetto” influence found
expression was land speculation. We had to struggle very hard to
suppress this type of activity, which cut at the very root of our land
system and hence of our whole work. But the prospect of quick gain
was a powerful attraction for many people, and the only way to combat
it was to concentrate the acquisition of land in the hands of the Jewish
National Fund. This, however, meant much more money than the
Jewish National Fund had, or could expect, at the time. So we had to
stand by and watch the rise in land prices which we knew must inevi-

TRIAL AND ERROR

302

tably lead to a slump, to failures, to re-emigration, with all the attendant
sufferings and difficulties. There were some land speculators who never
even came to Palestine, Bogus land companies sprang up, and parcels
of Palestine land were hawked on the markets of Warsaw, Lodz and
Lemberg, changing hands with bewildering rapidity. We knew that
such speculation carried its own nemesis, but it was hard to convince
the small man who saw a chance of doubling his life’s savings at one
stroke. After all, he always knew of someone who had made a fortune
that way: why not he?

All this was the more painful to watch because most of the human
material of the new immigration was extremely fine. I came again to
Palestine in the autumn of 1924, and spent the High Holidays in Tel
Aviv, where my mother then lived. This gave me the opportunity to
see some of the various small industries which were being created by
the new immigration. Often I would go to a dwelling consisting of one
higgish room, with an annex. In the big room one would find a loom,
and the head of the family — often a man of advanced age — ^together
with his son or daughter, working it. I asked more than once whether
such home industries were providing even a modest livelihood for the
family. The reply was almost invariably something like this: ^'Dr.
Weizmann, don’t you worry about the economic side. We shall man-
age to pay our way here. You’ll see. What you have to do is see that
more Jews come into Palestine.” One way or another we came through
the period of trial; some of those little industries are big industries
today. The process of overexpansion was arrested in time, and later we
established a sort of industrial bank to give credits to small shopkeepers
and industrialists in the towns. The Anglo-Palestine Bank also extended
assistance to the same type of immigrant. All the same, they had, I am
afraid, some reason to be dissatisfied with the Executive and myself.
There was a time when the agricultural settlers were getting the advice
and support of the Zionist Organization, while the urban settlers were
left to their own devices. But the fact was that it was impossible to
satisfy everybody, and we — ^particularly I — ^believed the agricultural
side to be the more important.

The experience of the great festivals of the New Year and the Day
of Atonement in Tel Aviv was a great one for me, and left a deep
impression. The atmosphere was so different from that of a Russian
or Polish town — or even an English one. As soon as the hour of sunset
approached, the Great Synagogue — ^at that time still unroofed, and
covered with some sort of makeshift tarpaulin arrangement — ^began to
fill with a mass of young men who had marched into Tel Aviv from
the neighboring villages. They were sturdy, bronzed, healthy-looking
specimens, in everyday clothes (they had no other), some even in
shorts, but all very clean, and somehow festive looking. Their presence

TRIAL AND ERROR

303

in the synagogue belied all the rumors that the people of the kvutzah
were atheists, disregarding all the traditions and tenets of the Jewish
religion. Chaim Nachman Bialik and I stood watching them throughout
the service, thinking the same thoughts: these were men and women
who served God with spade and pick and hoe on weekdays, and came
at the High Festivals to the synagogue to thank God for permitting
them to do so, for bringing them out of the hell of the ghetto, and
setting them on the threshold of a new life.

CHAPTER 27

The Jewish Agency

Non-Zionist Jewish Leaders and Philanthropists — Anything
rather than Jewish Nationalism — Russian Colonisation Plans
— Zionist Division 07t the Agency — Louis Marshall — Felix
Warhurg — Philanthropy and National Regeneration — Zionist
Educational Work Continues — Western Cities — Samuel Ze-
murray — Phe Constituent Assembly of the Jewtsh Agency^
August igsg — The Triple Setback,

Seven years lay between the ratification of the Mandate — ^July 1922
— and the founding of the Jewish Agency — ^August 1929. Amid the
varying fortunes of the Zionist movement, I did not once, during that
period, forget the need for the Agency. I had, in fact, been preoccupied
with the idea in preceding years.

Article IV of the Mandate reads: ‘'An appropriate Jewish agency
shall be recognized as a public body for the purpose of advising and
co-operating with the administration of Palestine in such economic,
social and other matters as may affect the establishment of the Jewish
National Home. . . . The Zionist Organization . . . shall be recognized
as such agency. It shall take steps in consultation with His Britannic
Majesty’s Government to secure the co-operation of all Jews who are
willing to assist in the establishment of the Jewish National Home.”
The words “Jewish Agency” as used in my narrative, mean, specifically
the Agency in the extended or enlarged form contemplated by the
Mandate.

Chiefly, though by no means exclusively, I had in mind the leaders
of the American Jewish community, the mainstay of the Joint Distribu-
tion Committee. Their philanthropies were manifold and generous, and
Palestine might occasionally be included among them as a peripheral
interest. They had done and were doing magnificent relief work for
European Jewry during and after the First World War, but for one
who believed that the Jewish Homeland offered the only substantial
and abiding answer to the Jewish problem, their faith in the ultimate
restabilizing of European Jewry was a tragedy. It was heartbreaking
to see them pour millions into a bottomless pit, when some of the
money could have been directed to the Jewish Homeland and used for

304

THE JEWISH AGENCY 305

the permanent settlement of those very Jews who in Europe never had
a real chance. They accused us Zionists of being doctrinaires, of being
more interested in creating a Jewish homeland than in saving Jewish
lives. Actually the shoe was on the other foot. They were too often the
doctrinaires who gladly supported any worthy cause as long as it did
not involve them in what they called Jewish nationalism.

An outstanding instance was the project for the creation of an auton-
omous Jewish settlement in Soviet Russia, which began with the
Crimea as the chosen area. It was, of course, a reasonable scheme,
though it was confined to Russian Jewry, and could have no effect on
the Jews of Poland, Rumania, etc. I believe the Crimea scheme was a
sincere attempt on the part of the Russian Government to “normalize”
certain Jewish elements which did not fit into the reorganized economic
life of Soviet Russia. They consisted of middlemen and small traders
who would be condemned to starvation under the new regime unless
they could change their means of livelihood. Though the project entailed
certain risks, no one would have felt justified in opposing a scheme so
well intentioned. There was no need for Zionists to support it actively,
but there was equally no need for violent opposition. But for a great
many non-Zionists, at that time at any rate, the peculiar merit of the
Crimea scheme was precisely that it had nothing to do with Palestine
and Jewish nationalism, and could in fact be used to deflect from
Palestine the attention of Jewish groups. This attitude,’ in turn, gave
a handle to certain Zionist groups which were not particularly keen —
for reasons I shall shortly give — on seeing the enlarged Jewish Agency
materialize.

Nor was it only to Jewish causes that these men were generous
donors — to the practical exclusion of Palestine. Mr. Julius Rosenwald,
of Chicago, for instance, was a universal philanthropist. For a Negro
university, for a Volksmuseum in Munich, for a Berlin school of den-
tistry, his purse seemed bottomless. But the only Palestinian institutions
to share in his benefactions were the Teachers Seminary in Jerusalem
and the Agricultural Station in Athlit. What seemed odd to me, in these
circumstances, was his continued and apparently quite lively interest in
all that went on in Palestine. He read most of our material, and his
stock remark whenever I met him was: “If you can convince me that
Palestine is a practical proposition, you can have all my money.” But
nothing could convince him. Personally he was most friendly to me
and to Shmarya Levin. To Levin he once said: “Look, my villa in the
suburbs is called Tel Aviv.’ What more do you want?” Levin answered :
“Only that you should build a house in the suburbs of Tel Aviv and call
it 'Chicago.^ ”

In most countries, as I have pointed out, the Keren Hayesod pro-
vided a sort of bridge for those people who were interested in Palestine

3o6 trial and error

and who w^ere ready to help the work as long as it did not commit them
in the political field. But this was not enough. The Mandate referred
to a '‘Jewish Agency” which would in fact speak for all Jews interested
in the building of the Homeland. The Fund was an instrument, not an
agency. It did not provide for the degree of participation which the
phrase in the Mandate contemplated and which I was eager to obtain.

Among the Zionists the opposition to the Agency w^as of two kinds.
There w^as, it will be remembered, the Brandeis group, which wanted
the Zionist Organization to remain as the Agency since, in their opinion,
it was no longer essentially a political body, and non-Zionists no longer
needed to shy away from it. But since the Brandeis group had more or
less withdrawn from organizational work, its opposition was not im-
portant. Much more important was the second type of opposition, which
sprang from precisely the opposite point of view.

Many of the European Zionists, and some of the American Zionists,
did not want to have the rich Jews of America, the so-called ^^assimila-
tionists,” in an Agency which would have a controlling voice in the
affairs of the Jewish Homeland. These Zionists were afraid of an
emasculating influence in the direction of philanthropy ; and I was ac-
cused of trying to drag those rich Jews into Zionist work against their
will and better judgment. ^Tf they want to co-operate,” said those
Zionists, '"the doors of the Organization are open to them. They can
become Zionists.” Which of course begged the question; such men were
not ready to join the Zionist Organization any more than the PICA
was ready to give up its individuality and merge with us. Moreover,
the difference between them and the Zionists was not only political; it
was also social.

Among those American Zionists who were strong advocates of the
Agency idea were men like Louis Lipsky — ^whom I have already men-
tioned — the late Jacob Fishman, and Morris Rothenberg. Fishman, who
will long be remembered as one of the ablest Jewish journalists in
America — he was for many years editor of the Jewish Morning Journal,
and conducted a widely read column on current affairs — ^had a special
insight into the public mind. There were very few in America, or for
that matter anywhere else, to whom I stood nearer, and with whom I
could discuss Zionist affairs in a more intimate way. He made his
paper a powerful influence for the good; his calm, level-headed com-
ments helped to maintain an informed point of view during times of
crisis, like the struggle with Brandeis, and the struggle round the Jew-
ish Agency. Jacob Fishman died in harness — ^attending the Zionist
Congress at Basle in 1946. It was a great loss to the Zionist move-
ment, and to his friends.

Morris Rothenberg belonged to the younger set, and has played a
considerable role in many phases of American Zionism as a clear, cool-

THE JEWISH AGENCY 307

headed and judicial mediator between various contending parties. In
spite of this role, which often exposes a man to attacks from both sides,
he always enjoyed the respect of divergent elements. He was, and re-
mains, an extremely valuable counselor, especially to one like myself
who only comes for short periodic visits and is likely to commit grave
errors if not loyally guided by advisers fully conversant with the scene
and with the dramatis personae.

The idea of the Jewish Agency was debated at our Actions Commit-
tee meetings, our Conferences and Congresses, as stormily as our rela-
tions with Great Britain. But shortly before I left for America in
February 1923, a session of the Actions Committee, held in Berlin,
adopted a resolution approving in general terms the idea of the Jewish
Agency, and laying down as a guiding principle for our negotiations
^'that the controlling organ of the Jewish Agency shall be responsible
to a body representative of the Jewish people.” This beautifully vague
statement, though it left me free to make a start, also left the door open
to the partisans of the ''World Jewish Congress” idea.

There were, it might seem, two ways of drawing into the work of
Palestine those Jews who were not prepared to declare themselves
Zionists — ^two ways of creating the Agency. One was to organize a full-
fledged "World Jewish Congress” with elected delegates from every
Jewish community. Theoretically this was correct enough; but in prac-
tice the calling of a World Jewish Congress encountered insuperable
difficulties — ^foremost among them the fact that the very elements in
Jewry which we wanted to bring in would have nothing to do with the
idea ! So that, even if and when achieved, such a congress would amount
to little more than a slightly enlarged Zionist Organization.

There were other grounds for the rejection of the World Congress
idea in this connection. To the people whose co-operation we sought,
the ultrademocratic machinery of Congresses was wholly unattractive.
They were reluctant even to meet the Zionists and discuss with them
the possibility of a covenant. It was therefore clear to me that the only
practical approach was to invite the various great organizations already
at work in other fields to join with us without forfeiting their identity.
This second way was the one I proposed and ultimately carried into
effect.

It was a curious fact that while the plan was attacked by ultra-Zionists
as "antidemocratic,” the most democratic body in Palestine itself, the
labor organization, was wholly in favor of it. At the various meetings
of the authoritative Zionist bodies the Palestine laborites stood behind
these efforts because they were men of practical experience; they knew
how badly we needed new sources of income and new forces in order
to get on with the job ; and though they may have seen certain dangers
in the plan, they agreed with me that it would be a grave mistake to

goS TRIAL AND ERROR

exclude from our work, on grounds of purely formal ‘"democracy,” those
powerful and responsible groups of American Jews.

So much for internal Zionist opposition to the Agency. There re-
mained still “the party of the second part.” Within the non-Zionist
groups too there was opposition to the proposed match. The Joint
Distribution Committee suffered, moreover, from a great weakness: it
had very few men to give us who could participate in executive work
on the level of their Zionist opposites in the Agency. Whereas the
Zionist men of the Executive were elected at Congresses after a severe
struggle, which more or less assured a high level of quality, the execu-
tives of the Joint were appointees. I do not say that they did not do
their work very well, but when the Agency was in fact constituted their
position in the mixed Executive was somewhat precarious. And before
the Agency was constituted they did whatever they could to prevent the
merger, fearing that in it they would lose their privileged position.

My acquaintance with Louis Marshall began in 1919, when he came
to Paris as the head of the American Jewish Delegation to the Peace
Conference. I saw little of him, for I did not take part in their work ;
the whole fight for minority national rights seemed to me to be unreal.
But I was greatly impressed by Marshall’s forceful personality, his
devotion to Jewish matters and the great wisdom he brought to bear
in the discussions. Although counted among the “assimilationists,” he
had a very clear understanding of and a deep sense of sympathy for
the national endeavors of the Jewish communities in Europe who were
struggling for cultural minority rights. He had learned Yiddish and
followed the Yiddish press closely, showing himself very sensitive to its
criticism. Of a naturally autocratic habit of mind, firm if not obstinate
on occasion, impatient of argument, he was, I felt, a man who, once
convinced of the rightness of a course, would follow it unswervingly.
The main difficulty in working with him lay in his tendency to pro-
crastinate — ^mainly due to his preoccupation with his profession and
his various public activities. One had always to be at his elbow to make
sure that the particular business in hand had not been snowed under
by other urgent duties. This naturally added to the delays in our nego-
tiations — ^the more so as the opponents of the Agency idea made use of
this weakness in Marshall. I countered by maintaining such pressure as
I could. Unable always to be in America, I sent out others; once
Leonard Stein, and on another occasion Kisch. Morris Rothenberg
acted as a sort of permanent liaison officer.

It was a profound mistake to think, as some Zionists did at the time,
that Marshall was not “representative” because he had not been elected,
like members of the Zionist Executive. As one traveled up and down
the States one could not but be impressed by the extent and power of
his influence. The most important Jewish groups in every city in

THE JEWISH AGENCY 309

America looked to him for the lead in communal matters, and his
attitude went a long way, in fact was often decisive, in determining
theirs.

And yet in one sense he was not representative of his following. He
was much nearer to Jews and Judaism; nearer, in fact, than Brandeis,
an ardent Zionist, ever was. For Brandeis Zionism was an intellectual
experiment, based on solid foundations of logic and reason. Marshall
was hot blooded, capable of pnerous enthusiasms as well as of violent
outbursts of anger — ^though it was seldom long before his cooler judg-
ment reasserted itself.

I found him at first completely skeptical as to the possibilities in
Palestine, knowing next to nothing about the country and about our
work. But he had such a great fvmd of sympathy and w'as so warm-
hearted, that it compensated for his ignorance of the subject. I remember
how, at the end of a long conversation on our prospects, he suddenly
burst out in his temperamental way: “But Dr. Weizmann, you will
need half a billion dollars to build up this country.** To which I calmly
replied, “You*ll need much more, Mr. Marshall,** and that completely
disarmed him. He was so baffled that he stared at me for a long time,
and I said: “The money is there, in the pockets of the American Jews.
It*s your business and my business to get at some of it.** I think that
from that moment on he began to understand the magnitude — ^and the
appeal — of the problem.

Of an entirely different character was Felix Warburg, whom I did
not meet until the spring of 1923. He was a man of sterling character,
charitable to a degree, a pivotal figure in the American Jewish com-
munity, if not in very close touch with the rank and file. There was
something of le bon prince about him. But he was susceptible to gossip,
and readily believed — or at least repeated — ^what his satellites told him
about Palestine.

Shortly after my arrival in the spring of 1923, I was somewhat sur-
prised to receive an invitation to lunch with him at the offices of Kuhn,
Loeb and Company in William Street. Enthroned in one of the more
palatial rooms of that palatial building, I foxmd an extremely affable and
charming gentleman, very much the grand seigneur, but all kindness.
I decided that my lunch with him was going to be quite as much
pleasure as duty. I judged too soon. We spent about an hour and a
half together, and almost the whole time was occupied by Mr. War-
burg*s account of what, according to his information, was happening
in Palestine. A more fantastic rigmarole, I have, to be honest, never
heard from a responsible quarter: bolshevism, immorality, waste of
money, inaction, inefficiency, all of it based on notliing more than
hearsay. I listened with what patience I could muster — it seemed to me
then a good deal — ^to this tirade, and felt a little embarrassed at the

310 TRIAL AND ERROR

thought of replying. I could not leave his statements unchallenged, but
as his guest I found it difficult to frame the flat contradictions which
they called for.

I let him talk himself out, and then I said : "'You know, Mr. Warburg,
I am really quite well acquainted with Palestine and with the work
there; I have been there every year since the end of the war, the last
time only a couple of months ago. I have been present at the inception
of almost every enterprise of ours. But as to these stories which I hear
from you — I must suppose at second, or third, or even fourth hand — I
cannot deny that there may be some particle of truth in the accusations
— "no smoke without fire’ and so on — ^but so far it has escaped my
attention. I think you have not yet been in Palestine yourself, and I
am frankly not prepared to accept your sources as unimpeachable.”
I then asked if I might put a plain question to him: "What if things
were the other way round? Suppose I came to you with a collection of
all the tittle-tattle and backstairs gossip that circulates, I have no doubt,
about Kuhn, Loeb and Company? What would you do?”

He laughed and answered: "I should probably ask you to leave.”

I said : "I can hardly ask you to leave, for I am your guest.”

He at once realized that he had gone too far, and he was ready to
make amends by offering me a contribution, I forget whether to the
Keren Hayesod or the Hebrew University. I did not accept, saying:
"Mr. Warburg, it will cost you much more than you are likely to offer
me now. The only way you can correct this painful interview is by
going to Palestine and seeing for yourself. If your information is con-
firmed at first hand I shall have no more to say, for I must respect your
views when based on personal experience.”

To my astonishment he took me up! "Your suggestion is the right
one,” he said. "I will talk it over with my wife, and if possible go to
Palestine at once.” To my further astonishment he was as good as his
word, and left for Palestine, together with Mrs. Warburg, within a
fortnight of this first conversation. I wired to Kisch to show them
around.

The next news I had of Warburg was a post card — still in my pos-
session — in which he wrote that he had been going up and down the
country and felt like doffing his hat to every man and every tree he
saw! He was deeply moved by every phase of our work, settlements,
schools, hospitals, and most of all by the settlers themselves. He and
his wife returned to the States — I was still there — eager to help in every
way they could. I was again invited to lunch, this time at their home.
Again I sat and listened, and what I heard now was nothing but praise
of Palestine and of our enterprises. I have seldom witnessed a more
complete conversion.

Yet somehow it left me cold. Warburg noticed this, and said I did

THE JEWISH AGENCY 311

not seem very pleased. I tried to explain: “You -see, you went to Pales-
tine convinced that of every dollar collected here in America some
ninety cents was being wasted. Probably you had a pleasant surprise
to discover in Palestine that, as far as you could see, only fifty cents
was being wasted. Perhaps, if you take a genuine interest in the work —
enough to lend a hand — ^you may one day discover that not one cent
is wasted. We have our difficulties; sometimes the progress is very
slow, sometimes it picks up a little speed ; but ours is a living organism,
afflicted with all the diseases and complications that commonly beset
living organisms. If you want to understand it, it will take more than
one visit to Palestine. I am sure you will go again, and yet again — ^and
not merely as a tourist ; and in the end we shall understand each other.”

This talk was the real beginning, I think, of Warburg’s participation
in our work. Incidentally it laid the foundations of a lifelong friendship
which stood the strain of a good many differences of opinion. These
arose from the fact that we looked at Palestine from different angles:
for us Zionists it was a movement of national regeneration ; for him it
was, at any rate in the early stages of his interest, one among the fifty-
seven varieties of his philanthropic endeavors — ^perhaps bigger and more
interesting than some others, but not different in essence. His whole
upbringing militated against his taking the same view as we did ; besides,
his co-workers in the innumerable other causes to which he was com-
mitted no doubt constantly warned him against the danger of identify-
ing himself too closely with the Zionists. Warburg was one of their
most valuable assets in communal work, and they greatly feared to lose
him under the impact of a new idea which by its very radicalism might
capture his imagination. Particularly was this the case with a certain
Mr. David A. Brown, a typical American go-getter with a noisy tech-
nique for conjuring millions from the pockets of wealthy American
Jews. People used to tell me wistfully that if we could only get for
Zionism the whole-hearted support of Mr. David A. Brown, all our
troubles would be over.

Warburg made several more trips to Palestine, where he was usually
under the guidance of Dr. Magnes or of some member of the Executive.
He really learned to know Palestine. The HebreV University was his
chief interest; he contributed large sums to it and became a member of
its Board of Governors. Later the Dead Sea project and the Rutenberg
development also attracted him.

The weight of Marshall’s and Warburg’s influence made things easier
for me in the States. Even before the Agency was officially founded
American non-Zionists began, under this influence, to co-operate in the
Keren Hayesod and in other instruments for the building of Palestine.
The fact that Marshall spoke from the same platform with me on
March 13, 1923 — it was my first American meeting of that visit — ^gave

312 TRIAL AND ERROR

the Keren Hayesod campaign a new impetus. Subsequently Marshall
and Oscar Strauss, the former Ambassador to Turkey, called together
a number of their friends with the purpose of founding a new invest-
ment corporation for Palestine. They did not achieve this object, but
they did bring new support to what is now the Palestine Economic
Corporation, which was able greatly to increase its investments in
various Palestinian enterprises.

In the fall of 1923, when I came for the second time that year to
America, after attending the Thirteenth Zionist Congress in Carlsbad,
Mr. Warburg initiated a half-million dollar fund for the Hebrew Uni-
versity through the medium of the American Jewish Physicians Com-
mittee. A first tentative sketch of the Jewish Agency constitution —
half a dozen headings on a few quarto sheets — ^which we had worked
on in the spring, was being elaborated; its development and ramifica-
tions were to keep us all busy at intervals for the next six years.

During all this period I carried on, throughout my American visits,
and side by side with my Agency conferences, my direct Zionist ac-
tivities, which I have already described- American Jewish communities
were not of a uniform pattern. Chicago was a difficult city for us,
because of Rosenwald’s influence. Still more difficult was Cincinnati,
where the community consisted mainly of Jews of German extraction —
and assimilated at that. There was a comparatively weak Russo-Jewish
colony, and some of its members worked hard to maintain some sort of
Zionist movement in the face of stony opposition. Generally speaking
our difficulties increased as we moved westward. California was a differ-
ent world, remote from the Jewish interests of the eastern states, and
practically virgin soil from the Zionist point of view.

There were a few clearings, or oases, here and there. In Chicago,
there were, among others, two able, hard-working Zionists, Albert K.
Epstein and Benjamin Harris, whose lives were saturated with Zionist
thought and feeling. It was a particular pleasure to work with them
because there was more than a coincidence of Zionist feeling; they
v/ere both industrial chemists, and they had practical plans for Palestine.
Some of these are now being put into effect, and I have a large file of
letters from them dealing with both Zionism and chemistry.

I made an unusual ‘"find” in New Orleans, where lived a very re-
markable personality in American Jewry — Samuel Zemurray, the
“Banana King.” I paid my first visit to New Orleans specially to meet
him. He had been told of my arrival and postponed his own planned
departure from the city for several days-^ays which I found not
only extremely interesting, but also profitable for the Funds.

Zemurray had come to America from Kishinev as a very young man,
and his early years in the New World had been filled in by all manner
of occupations, which somehow had successively brought him a little

THE JEWISH AGENCY 313

further south. His first venture to prove even moderately successful
was peddling bananas from a barrow ; this had paid his way down as far
as New Orleans, where he arrived with a small surplus in hand. He
decided to continue in the line which had brought him his first credit
balance. By the time I met him he was the ‘Tanana King'' — ^the owner
of vast plantations in Honduras, with their warehouses, packing sheds,
and so on, as well as of his own fleet of refrigerator ships. Today he
is the head of the United Fruit Corporation, one of the most powerful
American produce companies. Throughout all this record of success
Zemurray retained his simplicity, his transparent honesty, his lively
interest in people and things, and his desire to serve. His chosen
studies in leisure hours were mathematics and music, and he got a
great deal of satisfaction out of them. It was said of him that his suc-
cess in the Central American republics was mainly due to the fact that
he was deeply concerned for the welfare of the peons he employed —
which was by no means the case with most of his competitors. He built
schools, hospitals, recreation grounds and model villages, and generally
made his work-people feel that he had a genuine interest in their con-
dition. His building operations resulted incidentally in the excavation
of some remarkable relics of the Maya culture, and his great collection
of these antiquities is now one of the show pieces of the New Orleans
University.

Zemurray was one of the highlights of my visit to the States in that
year ,* and I never missed an opportunity of seeing him on later visits.
He did not take a public part in our work; but his interest has been con-
tinuous and generous. I found him, at the outbreak of the war, depressed
by the White Paper of 1939 — depressed, yet hopeful of the ultimate
outcome. Despite his distress over the White Paper, he handed over the
greater part of his fleet of ships to Great Britain at the beginning of the
war.

I have said enough, I belike, concerning the obstacles, the delays,
the opposition, the internal and external complications which make up
the story of the creation of the Jewish Agency. Seven years and more
of my life were consumed by it, and the most shattering blow of all was
reserved for the hour of our triumph.

In August 1929, immediately after the Zionist Congress of that year,
the Constituent Assembly of the Jewish Agency met at last, in Zurich,
Switzerland. Zionist opposition had been overcome, external opposition
had been soothed: a genuine assembly of Jewish leaders in the non-
Zionist world declared its intention to stand side by side with the Zion-
ists in the practical work in Palestine. All sections of the Jewish people
were represented and every community of any size. I have described in
this chapter only the American scene in the history of the Agency ; in
Poland, England, Holland, in every country with a Jewish population.

TRIAL AND ERROR

the same story had played itself out. And it was not only the wealthy
heads of the large philanthropic organizations who had been drawn into
the partnership. The Jewish Agency brought together as distinguished
a group of Jews as we have witnessed in our time; all classes and fields
of achievement were represented, from Leon Blum, the great socialist
leader, to Marshall and Warburg on the right ; from Lord Melchett, one
of England's leading industrialists, to Albert Einstein the scientist and
Chaim Nachman Bialik the poet.

At the end of the meeting I had a long talk with Marshall and War-
burg. They assured me that now my financial troubles were over; it
would no longer be necessary for me to go up and down America — ^and
other countries — ^from city to city, making innumerable appeals and ad-
dresses in order to help create the means for the limited budget of the
Zionist Organization. This prediction or promise of theirs represented,
I am sure, their sincere belief.

A few days after the Constituent Assembly had dispersed amid mu-
tual felicitations, and while Zionists and non-Zionists all over the world
were congratulating themselves on the creation of this new and powerful
instrument of Jewish action, the Palestine riots broke out on August
23. On September ii, Louis Marshall, the mainstay of the non-Zionist
section of the Agency, died after an operation. And within a few weeks
there came the great economic crash of 1929, to be followed by the long
depression — ^perhaps the severest in modem history — ^which struck hard
at the sources of support which the Agency had planned to tap.

It would be quite wrong to say that this last series of blows undid the
work of the preceding years. To begin with, the educational achieve-
ment of the long effort could never be undone. Its effects continued to
grow, the breach between the Zionist and non-Zionist sections of public
opinion continued to narrow. The very negotiations produced, before
the Agency was completed, a more sympathetic response on the part of
the non-Zionists. The notion that the building of the Jewish Homeland
was a fantastically Utopian dream, the obsession of impractical, Mes-
sianically deluded ghetto Jews, began to be dispelled by the participa-
tion of prominent men of affairs with a reputation for sober-mindedness
and hard-bitten practicality. Today as I write, nearly twenty years after
the official founding of the Jewish Agency, the presence of such figures
in the work for Palestine is a commonplace. The dark events of recent
years have had a good deal to do with winning them over. But the first
steps were taken, the pattern was created, during the long period of
persuasion and negotiation which I have described in this chapter.

CHAPTER 28

Foundations

A Decisive Decade — Progress of the Hebrew University —
What Were to Be Its Functions? — Inauguration Set for April
I, ip2^ — Lord Balfour Agrees to Preside — Preparations — An
Unforgettable Ceremony — Balfour Tours Palestine — A Loving
Reception — Significance of the Opening of the University —
Rising Anti-Semitism in Europe, Political Setbacks in Palestine
— The "‘Duality'^ of the Mandate — The Mandates Commission
of the League of Nations — Criticism within the Movement —
Jabotinsky Founds Revisionist Party — Ussishkin Resigns from
Executive — But the Work Goes on, the Foundations Are Laid.

TThE years between 1920 and 1929 were for the Zionist movement and
the National Home years of alternating progress and setback, of slow
laborious achievement sown with recurrent disappointment, and of the
gradual emergence in Palestine of foundations whose solidity was to be
demonstrated in the time that followed. For me they were years of hard
work and frequent anxiety, of much wandering in many lands, and of
continuous effort within the Zionist Organization to keep our activities
and methods in line with the views which I have set forth in the preced-
ing pages. Those were also the years that witnessed the rise of the new
anti-Semitism in Europe generally and of Nazism in Germany, impart-
ing new and desperate urgency to our task.

One event stands out in the decade of the twenties on which I linger
with pleasure, because of both its practical and its symbolic significance,
and that is the opening of the Hebrew University. If I give it a special
space in these memoirs it is not only because of the peculiar relation-
ship that I had and have toward that institution, but because it repre-
sents the fulfillment of my particular dream of the early days of the
movement.

The first step toward the realization of the dream, the reader may
remember, was the acquisition of Grey Hill House on Mount Scopus
in the very midst of the war. The second was the erection of the library
building — ^the Wolffsohn Memorial — ^near by, to house the large collec-
tion of books already existing in the Jewish National Library in
Jerusalem. Our first librarian was Dr. Heinrich Loewe, an old Zionist

315

3i6 trial and error

comrade-in-arms of my student days, who had in the interim become a
librarian of the Berlin University Library. To Dr. Loewe we owe the
establishment of a sound bibliographical organization and tradition.
Once the work was launched, we found books pouring in from all cor-
ners of the earth; the Oriental section was particularly fortunate, and
rapidly assumed real importance in its field. The opening of the School
of Oriental Studies followed closely on the completion of the library
building, and was for some time accommodated in a private house rented
for the purpose.

In 1923 Professor Patrick Geddes was invited to Jerusalem to assist
in the replanning of the city. We asked him to undertake the design
and layout of the university buildings, and after a study of the site he
prepared some magnificent sketches which delighted all of us. Unfor-
tunately none of them has been actually carried out, though the general
plan has been followed, and for myself I still hope before I die to see the
great assembly hall which Geddes designed rising on the slopes of
Scopus.

Grey Hill House was rebuilt completely, to house the two institutes
of microbiology and biochemistry, the first under Professor Saul Adler,
formerly of Leeds, the second under Professor Fodor, who devoted
much time to the acquisition of equipment and the adaptation of the
building to laboratory use. The American Jewish Physicians Committee
supplied much of the money for this beginning, and covered the budget
of the two institutes for the first three years. We now felt that we had
at least the nucleus of a faculty of sciences.

Most popular of the faculties was, of course, the Institute of Jewish
Studies, which was endowed by Sol Rosenbloom of Pittsburgh. Baron
Edmond de Rothschild, Felix Warburg and other friends took a per-
sonal interest in this branch of the University, and, indeed, there was a
stage when I felt there was some danger in the enthusiasm which it
aroused. There were too many who thought of the institute romantically
in terms of a great center of Hebrew learning and literature; it was
placed under the patronage of the Chief Rabbis of London and Paris, and
its council included Dr. Magnes. It ran the risk of becoming a theological
seminary, like those of London, Breslau or Philadelphia, instead of the
school of “literae humaniores” of a free university. Happily the danger
was averted when the council of the Institute of Jewish Studies was
merged into the general structure of the University.

Somehow few people in those early days gave much thought to the
possibility of developing a great scientific faculty at the Hebrew Uni-
versity. I was repeatedly told that we could never hope to compete with
Cambridge or London or Paris or Harvard in chemistry, physics or
mathematics. I felt this to be an erroneous conception — anyhow, on a
long view. True, for the first few years we might not amount to anything

FOUNDATIONS

317

in this field, but if the University was encouraged to develop freely, who
could tell what young new forces we might attract from the scientific
world? I felt, too, that the sciences had to be encouraged at Jerusalem,
not only for their own sake, but because they were an integral part of
the program for the full development of Palestine, and also because op-
portunities for Jewish students in the leading universities of Europe
were becoming more and more restricted. The last consideration was at
the time no more than a vague uneasiness, even in my own mind.
Events in recent years have made it only too bitterly specific.

In addition to the institutes already described, we had, in Jerusalem,
the great Rothschild Hospital, which we felt might well be used for re-
search, and later on for teaching. We also had a Jewish Agricultural
Experimental Station, with quite a number of research workers, and
this might make the beginning of an agricultural faculty.

Altogether, we thought all the foregoing a fair start. Everything was
of course on the most modest scale, but it seemed to us to contain much
promise. We realized that the process of building up a university was
bound to be a slow one, even apart from the fact that limited finances
(in relation to the task in hand) imposed on us the utmost caution. But
I had never believed that such things as universities could spring into
being overnight, particularly in a country still struggling to provide it-
self with the bare necessities of life. Nor did I believe that everything
would — or even ought to be — ^plain sailing for the infant university. Such
institutions, like men, are often none the worse for having experienced
poverty and adversity in youth: if they survive at all, they are the
stronger, the more firmly rooted, for it.

What seemed important was to make a start with the materials in
hand, and to put them to the best possible use. To this we applied our
minds in 1923 and the following years, to such purpose that by the
spring of 1925 we could look at ‘^our University” and feel there really
was enough of it to justify a formal ‘'opening ceremony.” Of course at
that early stage no students had been accepted, but a body of research
workers was gradually assembling and the various institutes were taking
shape. After much discussion and heart-searching, therefore, we sent
out invitations for an opening ceremony to be conducted by Lord Bal-
four on April i, 1925. I need not say how much his instant and enthu-
siastic acceptance of the invitation meant to us.

I therefore found myself, in the middle of March 1925, setting forth
with my wife and our son Benjy, to join the Esperia in Genoa. On
board we found Professor Rappard, permanent secretary of the Man-
date Commission, who was representing the University of Geneva at
the opening. The Balfour party — ^Balfour himself, his ex-secretary, Ed-
ward Lascelles and Mrs. Lascelles, Balfour’s niece — came on board at

3i8 trial and error

Naples; Balfour, being an indifferent sailor, had wished to curtail the
sea passage as much as possible. Other friends — ^notably the Sokolows
— ^were also on board, so that there was plenty of company. As far as
Sicily the weather held, but after Syracuse the wind sprang up and the
sea became choppy, and the Balfour party was out of action for three
days. It is rare for the Mediterranean to misbehave so late in March,
and I suppose more than one of us muttered ‘^ahsit omen'' under his
breath. Lord Balfour did not emerge again until we docked in Alexan-
dria. It was still blowing half a gale, and a heavy shower of cold rain
met us as we walked down the gangway. Mrs. Lascelles’ ironical re-
marks about the wonderful weather in the Mediterranean and the blue
skies of Egypt left me with an uncomfortable impression that I was
perhaps being held responsible for the misconduct of the elements.

The Balfours went on to Cairo, to stay with Lord Allenby, who came
with them a couple of days later to Kantara and accompanied us up to
Jerusalem.

The situation in Palestine was at the time somewhat tense, but the
security officers assured us that apart from a fairly peaceable demonstra-
tion in the form of a strike, and the closing of a few Arab shops in Jeru-
salem, Haifa and Jaffa, nothing untoward was happening. Which was
just as well, as our guests were beginning to arrive in considerable
numbers: representatives of universities and learned societies from all
over the world, not to mention a great influx of tourists. It was not easy
to find rooms for all these people in Jerusalem, for hotel accommodation
was still scarce, and not of the best Still, our reception committee did
its work well, and I was not aware that any complaints were made.
Every resident who had an appropriate house had placed it at the com-
mittee’s disposal, and one way or another we managed to see to it that
our guests enjoyed reasonable comfort.

The Balfour party and the Allenbys stayed of course at Government
House. Kisch, Eder and I lived through some days of rather severe
tension, with the responsibility of so many distinguished people on our
hands under rather difficult conditions. There was, for instance, only
one road from the city to the University on Mount Scopus, and that a
narrow one, with little room for cars to turn. Control of traffic was a
rather alarming problem, for the number of cars traveling to and fro
was a record for Jerusalem at that time. Another purely physical diffi-
culty was the actual site chosen for the opening ceremony. There was as
yet no hall which could accommodate anything approaching the number
of our guests and visitors — ^we expected some twelve thousand to four-
teen thousand people. The only place, therefore, where we could stage
the ceremony was the natural amphitheater facing a deep wadi on the
northeast slope of Scopus. Round this amphitheater we arranged tiers of
seats, following the natural rock formation. Everything was rather

FOUNDATIONS

319

rough and ready, but the setting had such natural beauty that no art
could have improved on it.

The snag was that, to face the audience in this amphitheater, the plat-
form had to be on a bridge over the wadi itself. The gorge was deep,
sheer and rocky; the bridge was an improvised wooden affair which
inspired — in me at least — ^little confidence. I was told that it had been
repeatedly tested, but my blood ran cold at the thought that something
might give way at the crucial moment. . . . The builders, however, were
convinced that the platform could safely bear two hundred or two hun-
dred and fifty people. However, two hundred of our sturdiest young
chalutzim volunteered to dance an energetic hora on the contraption.
Nothing happened — except a great deal of noise — ^and I felt a little easier.
Minute inspection of the platform failed to reveal any damage.

One final problem remained : the guarding of the tested platform dur-
ing the night before the opening. Again our young chalutzim (members
of the Haganah this time) came to the rescue : they established a sort
of one-night camp in the wadi, and conducted frequent inspections, the
last only a few minutes before the guests began to arrive.

Though the accommodation might be simple, even primitive, the sur-
roundings — ^the austere magnificence of the landscape which opens out
before one from this part of Scopus — ^more than made up for it. I doubt
if anyone who made the pilgrimage to Mount Scopus that day, and the
arrivals began before dawn, regretted the nonexistence of the Central
Hall. Apart from our foreign visitors, people came from all over the
country, people of every class and age and type. Only the three or four
front rows of the amphitheater were reserved; the rest were open to
the public, and needless to say were thronged hours before the ceremony
began. I noted with some pride the discipline and good humor shown
by the crowds.

Half an hour or so before the opening time the speakers and other
platform guests assembled in the Grey Hill House to don their academic
robes ; then they passed, a colorful little procession, through the Univer-
sity grove on to the platform. The party from Government House ap-
proached direct, from the opposite side. Lord Balfour’s appearance set
off a tremendous ovation, which was hushed into complete stillness as
he took his place on the platform.

The ceremony itself is a matter of historic record, and I need not
describe it here. Many of the speakers were deeply moved. One or two
of them were, as was only to be expected, rather long winded. I remem-
ber thinking at the time that Bialik (of all people!) was rather strain-
ing people’s patience: he spoke in Hebrew, which to many of those
present was a strange tongue. Moreover, I knew that at sunset the air
would cool rapidly, and I was afraid that Lord Balfour (who was a man
of seventy-seven) and some of the others might suffer, since all were

320

TRIAL AND ERROR

bareheaded and withotit overcoats. However, we did finish before sun-
down; the crowds dispersed in orderly fashion; the guests departed to
rest before the dinner party arranged for the evening ; and the various
committees responsible for the arrangements heaved a sigh of relief
that ever3rthing had gone off without a noticeable hitch.

At dinner that evening my wife sat next to Lord Allenby. She was
moved to ask him : '"Did you think my husband completely harebrained
w’hen he asked your permission for the laying of the foundation stones
in 1918?'' He thought for a moment and replied: ''When I project my
mind back to that day — as I often do — I come to the conclusion that
that short ceremony inspired my army, and gave them confidence in
the future.” He repeated this statement in the short speech which he
made after the dinner.

Before Lord Balfour came to Palestine, it had been our idea to spare
him as much as possible. We had planned a short drive through the
country to show him one or two places in which we thought he might
be specially interested, but nothing at all tiring. We had, however,
counted without our guest, who refused to be spared. He liked the look
of the country, and wanted to see as much as he possibly could of it. We
were also very anxious that he should not speak too much, especially in
the open. But here again, when it came to the point, there was no hold-
ing him back. He was warmly received wherever we went, and naturally
the man in charge would say a few words of welcome (which I tried,
with varying success, to keep as few as possible). Lord Balfour clearly
liked replying. He said on one occasion that it reminded him of a gen-
eral election tour — ^but with everybody on the same side !

The most impressive feature of his trip was to Tel Aviv. I had been
a little uneasy about this beforehand. It was a hi^^sh town, and there
were bound to be all sorts of people among its crowds. Anyone who
wanted to work mischief could easily do so. Security measures were, of
course, stringent. We traveled down by car from Jerusalem one morn-
ing, and stopped for lunch at Mikveh, the Agricultural School a couple
of miles this side of Tel Aviv. There we had a light lunch, and left Lord
Balfour to rest, while we went ahead to reconnoiter. The crowds I met
both impressed and terrified me. The main streets — ^Allenby Road and
Herzl Street — ^were lined with solid blocks of people : not only were the
pavements a living wall, but every balcony, every window, every roof-
top, was jammed to capacity. These crowds had been waiting for some
hours. I went to see Mr. Dizengoff, the mayor, who assured me that
there was every reason to be satisfied with the measures taken for the
maintaining of order, and then we returned to Mikveh to pick up the
rest of the party.

So we came into Tel Aviv in the early afternoon, in an open car. The
enthusiasm with which Lord Balfour was received was indescribable.

FOUNDATIONS

321

In Herd Street stood a group of Jewish women from Poland, weeping
for joy; now and again one of them would press forward and gently
touch either the body of the car or Lord Balfour’s sleeve, and pronounce
a blessing on him. He was obviously deeply affected. The car moved
forward slowly ; complete order prevailed ; and in due course we reached
^‘Balfour Street/’ which Lord Balfour was to open. Here he was greeted
by representatives of the municipality, and the short ceremony followed.
Then we moved on to the Herzliah High School, where the students
staged a gymnastic display which greatly impressed the Balfour party.
With one voice they made two comments : "'These boys might have come
from Harrow !” And "Mr. Dizengoff might easily be the mayor of Liver-
pool or of Manchester!” Both remarks were intended — ^and taken — ^as
the highest compliments.

After tea we adjourned to the quarters prepared for the party in
Shmarya Levin’s old house, which had been vacated for the purpose.
Everything was ready there, including a staff of servants and a guard,
and we left Balfour and his party to recover from a rather strenuous
day. I arranged to call on them in the morning.

Later in the evening I thought I would like to see how things were
round about the Levin house, and strolled in that direction. But a cordon
of young men, on guard, shut off the whole neighborhpod. Even I could
not get within three hundred yards of the gate. This was only in part for
security reasons ; the idea was mainly to keep off the noise of the crowd,
which showed little disposition to go home to bed. Balfour told me the
next morning that he had had a quiet night, so the precautions seem to
have been effective.

We set out that day on a short tour of the Judaean colonies — ^Rishon
and Petach Tikvah — ^then turned north to Haifa, where Balfour had
another wonderful reception at the Technical Institute (opened almost
simultaneously with the University). We went on into the Emek. On
the way to Nahalal we passed a hill crowned with a newly erected bar-
racks, round which clustered a number of people who looked like re-
cently arrived refugees. They made a striking group. We discovered
that they were Chassidim, who, led by their Rabbi (the Rabbi of Ya-
bion) had landed in Palestine only a few days before. Many of them
had since then been compelled to sleep in the open, which in spite of
the light rains still to be expected in April, they were finding a wonder-
ful experience. Balfour alighted from the car and went into the barracks
to receive the blessings of the Rabbi. I told him that if he would come
again in a year or two he would find quite a different picture : he would
find these people established on their own land, content, and looking
like peasants descended from generations of peasants.

The tour prolonged itself to include a number of places not originally
contemplated. Balfour talked to the settlers everywhere — ^at least to

3^2

TRIAL ANB ERROR

those who could understand English. He also met some of the Arab
shdkhs who came in from near-by villages. He was impressed by the
looks and bearing of the settlers: upright, sunburned, quiet, completely
self possessed — entirely different from the nervous deportment of the
urbanized Jew, The children, too, were obviously village children, sons
and daughters of the soil, simple, modest, without affectation, and of an
infectious gaiety. Lord Balfour showed a lively interest in everything
and everybody. He wanted to understand these people, their lives, their
requirements, their budget, how they managed without money or per-
sonal possessions, how they kept their relations with the outside world
so simple, how they managed to live in virtually self-contained villages,
what sort of intellectual life they had, what music they played, what
books they read* Toward the end of the trip he said to me; "T think the
early Christians must have been a little like these men.^’ He added:
*‘They fit quite remarkably into this landscape/*

The trip ended in Nazareth, into which we came one glorious evening
under a full moon. The Balfour party was leaving the next morning for
Syria, and I was returning to Haifa to join my mother for Passover,
so this was really farewell I remember walking that last night with
Edward Lascelles along the road out of Nazareth, and our being accosted
by two or three Arab youths anxious to offer their services as guides
to the city. As it was night, we said we would perhaps meet them the
next day. They then entered into conversation with us, and told us in
their rather curious English that there had just arrived in Nazareth a
very great Jew, Mr. Balfour. We tried to persuade them that they were
mistaken in this, but they were quite sure that he was a Jew, and had
COTO to "'hand over** Palestine to the Jews. It was all said quite without
bitterness, indeed lightly, and half-banteringly. One could only reflect
that Arab propaganda had already made considerable progress.

At dinner that evening a discussion arose as to whether Lord Balfour
should go to Damascus by car, or take the train as had been arranged.
I protested vigorously against the suggested change. I did not think it
safe for him to travel by car to Syria; besides, the French authorities
under Sarrail had given every guarantee for the train journey, and the
train would be waiting at the frontier. It had been hard enough in Pales-
tine to take all the measures needed for security, and there we had regular
co-operation with the authorities, in addition to thousands of young men
prepared to maintain order both in the towns and on the roads. Nothing
of this applied in Syria. Quite an argument developed between Mrs.
Lascelles and me, and once or twice she hinted that I was exploiting her
uncle for purposes of propaganda. This was just what I had been doing
my level best to avoid. I had all the time been trying to protect him
from such ""exploitation** — it was he who had objected to my well-meant
efforts at restriction. In the end Mrs. Lascelles appealed to Balfour

FOUNDATIONS

323

himself, who had listened to the whole conversation without giving the
slightest indication of his own views, and he said : ^Well, I suppose we
shall have to obey Weizmann's orders; after all, we must be imposing a
great strain on him.” So the original program was followed.

I had sent my secretary, Miss Lieberman, on to Beyrouth ahead of
the party, to report to me how things were going there. The next morn-
ing I heard from her on the phone, and received the whole story of the
violent demonstration which brought the Balfour visit to an abrupt end
almost before it began : how crowds tried to storm the Victoria Hotel ;
how Sarrail had had to smuggle the party away, and send it by fast car
to the boat.

We were deeply chagrined that the visit which had gone off so har-
moniously in Palestine should have closed so unpleasantly in Syria, but
were thankful that nothing worse had happened than the cancellation of
the party's plans. I went down to Alexandria to meet the Sphinx and to
tell Lord Balfour how sorry I was about the incidents in Beyrouth. He
replied placidly: “Oh, I wouldn't worry about that — nothing compared
with what I went through in Ireland!'' From Alexandria, too, he wrote
me a charming letter of thanks for the Palestine visit. In it he said : “The
main purpose of my visit was the opening of the Hebrew University.
But the highest intellectual and moral purposes can be only partially
successful if, parallel with them, there is not a strong material develop-
ment. This is why I was particularly happy to see the flourishing Jewish
settlements which testify to the soundness and strength of the growing
National Home.”

In the weeks that followed I thought over the question of the opening
ceremony, and the criticisms which it had provoked, both before and
after. Even Dr. Magnes, about to become the head of the University,
inclined to deprecate the ceremony as too much of a “political act.” I
did not see why it was a “political act” or, if it was, why it should lose
any value thereby. It may be that the creation of any great institution
in Palestine — or an3rwhere else, for that matter — is always a political
act. The very existence of the Jewish National Home was a political
act. But I gathered from Dr. Magnes that the words had a derogatory
meaning. Other critics said that there was not enough of the University
to justify this “enormous display” and the “solemnity” of the inaugura-
tion. Up to a point I agreed. In fact, we had not a real university ; we
had the germ of a university. It was like the Jewish National Home it-
self : small, but with great potentialities. It had seemed to me that what
was needed was some strong stimulus to galvanize the whole thing into
new life, and that the formal opening had something of the effect in-
tended was shown by the fact that funds began to flow in very shortly
afterward from all quarters — sometimes from quarters till then indiffer-

TRIAL AND ERROR

324

ent to Palestinian affairs. Externally, too, the opening ceremony made
a profound impression. Scientists and scholars from abroad had traveled
through the country and seen for themselves what was being done there.
Many who had previously been skeptical had revised their views in the
face of the facts. Among them were Rappard and Allenby. Though by
no means unfriendly, Rappard had on the whole been critical, and it
was certainly a surprise to him to find so marked a revival, both of the
people and the land, within so short a period. Allenby was, if anything,
even more deeply impressed. He had said openly at the beginning that
he had been rather against the whole enterprise as impractical ; now he
had come to believe both in the Jewish National Home and also in its
importance to the British Empire.

Again, the ceremony had served as a link with friends, Jewish and
non- Jewish, in the Diaspora. Many non- Jewish learned societies held
meetings on the same day : in Paris, for instance, a distinguished gath-
ering, headed by Leon Blum, Painleve and others, sent us messages of
greeting; others came from New York, Chicago, Stockholm and — ^un-
thinkable as it may seem today — ^from Berlin, Frankfurt and Leipzig.

Today, less than a quarter of a century after the opening ceremony,
we have on Scopus a full-fledged University, comparable in most re-
spects with the ancient homes of learning of Western Europe. It is
rapidly approaching completion, insofar as a university may ever be
said to approach completion, and if not for the war would already have
gained for itself no small reputation. Looking back now, I really believe
that this rapid development would not have come to pass without the
great impetus given to the idea on April i, 1925, when Balfour stood,
like a prophet of old,- on Mount Scopus, and proclaimed to the world
that here a great seat of learning was being created — seeing far beyond
the few small buildings which then formed the skeleton of the university
of the future.

I have said that for me the opening of the Hebrew University was the
highlight of a period of labor and anxiety, of alternating disappointment
and achievement, during which the foundations of the Jewish National
Home were being laid. The more dramatic events, and the more spec-
tacular achievements, of later years have dimmed the memory of the era
preceding 1929 and obscured its significance; but if there is today a
powerful Yishuv in Palestine and a great Zionist movement in the
world, their existence and character can be understood only against the
background of the early struggle.

The first shadows of the eclipse of Jewish life in Europe were already
visible. Hitler made his brief and inglorious debut on the German scene
in 1923 ; in 1924 was published, with its outright declara-

tion of war on the Jewish people. Similar stirrings were noticeable in

FOUNDATIONS

325

Rumania, Hungary and Poland. Most of us have since forgotten these
earlier manifestations, and few of us gave them their proper evaluation
at the time. But a handful of persons — ^these m@stly in our movement —
gave warning even then. Sokolow’s speech at the 1923 Congress was
devoted mainly to the rise of the new anti-Semitism, and we all knew
that he was very far from being a scaremonger.

Side by side with these portents, there was a general diminution in
the political status of the Jewish National Home. In England the at-
tacks on the Mandate policy for Palestine continued,, both in the Lords
and in the Commons. The policy naturally had its defenders, too, but
what disturbed us most was the evidence of a constant tendency on the
part of the British Government to shift the emphasis from the dynamic
aspect of the Mandate to the static. Instead of viewing the Jewish Na-
tional Home as an institution in the making it seemed to be placing in-
creasing emphasis on the status quo in Palestine. The White Paper of
1922, which removed Trans- Jordan arbitrarily from the operation of
the Mandate, proposed for Palestine "'a Legislative Council with a
majority of elected members,’' Carried out to the full, this would have
meant handing over Palestine to the Arab majority and excluding world
Jewry, the partner to the Balfour Declaration, from a say in the destinies
of Palestine. The legislative council was never set up; but in 1923 we
faced another proposal of the same kind. The British Government of-
fered the Arabs an ''Arab Agency,” presumably intended as a sort of
counterpoise to the "Jewish Agency” provided for in the Mandate. It
was difficult to see what functions such an agency would discharge, for
it would clearly not represent anyone but the Arabs of Palestine (if
them), but it may have been felt that it would please the Arabs to feel
that they had, at least in name, equal status with world Jewry, in respect
to Palestine. The Government had informed us that they would proceed
with this offer of an Arab Agency only if both parties, the Arabs and
the Jews, agreed to it. As it happens the Arabs turned it down on sight.

In all these actions we were placed in the curious position of seeming
to oppose democratic rights to the Arabs. Only those who had some no-
tion of the structure of Arab life understood how farcical was the pro-
posal to vest political power in the hands of the small Arab upper class
in the name of democracy. But of this I shall have much more to say
further on. What mattered more, at the time, was the insidious exclu-
sion, by implication, of the relationship between Palestine and world
Jewry.

The notion of the "duality of the Mandate,” of equal weight being
given to the Arabs of Palestine as against the entire Jewish people, crept
into the reports of the Mandates Commission, too. In October 1924,
the Mandates Commission issued, this statement :

326

TRIAL AND ERROR

. . . the policy of the Mandatory Power as regards immigration
gives rise to acute controversy. It does not afford entire satisfaction
to the Zionists, who feel that the establishment of a Jewish National
Home is the first duty of the Mandatory Power, and manifest a cer-
tain impatience at the restrictions which are placed in the way of im-
migration and in respect of the granting of land to immigrants. This
policy is, on the other hand, rejected by the Arab majority of the
country, which refuses to accept the idea of a Jewish National Home,
and regards the action of the Administration as a menace to its tradi-
tional patrimony , . .

The implication here is that the policy in regard to Palestine should
include only the Arab minority and the Jewish minority confronting
each other in the country — a policy which would have completely nulli-
fied the Balfour Declaration.

The attitude of the Mandates Commission undoubtedly owed some-
thing to its President, at that time an Italian, the Marquis Theodoli, a
definite opponent of the Zionist movement, who had married into an
Arab family. However, that first report of the Mandates Commission
was for us a warning of how little Zionist aims and aspirations were
understood even by those called upon to supervise the administration.
It was obvious that a special task lay before us, namely, to explain to
the League of Nations, its members, and its organs in Geneva, the funda-
mental principles, political, ethical and historical, which guided the Zionist
movement. We decided to open an office in Geneva, under the guidance
of Dr. Victor Jacobson. Gradually succeeding sessions of the Mandates
Commission were to show traces of its effect- My own contacts with the
leading personalities of the Mandates Commission were, I believe, also
of value.

These external difficulties were reflected in the internal stresses of
the Zionist Organization which, as a democratic institution, gave full
play to the possibilities of an opposition. I faced prolonged and often
bitter attacks at the Conferences and Congresses ; and I used to com-
plain, half-seriously, that if our movement had no other attribute of a
government, it had at least the first prerequisite — ^an opposition.

Jabotinsky withdrew from the Executive shortly after the issuance
of the White Paper of 1922, which he denounced, though he had, like
the rest of his fellow-members, signed the letter of acceptance. He pro-
ceeded to establish the Revisionist Party, which ultimately became ‘The
New Zionist Organization,"' to provide the necessary platform. He at-
tacked me for what he called my “Fabian" tactics, and insufficient energy
and enterprise : “We have always to fight the British Government." It
was rather odd that he should also have attacked me for arranging the
opening ceremony of the Hebrew University. He accused me of throwing
dust in the eyes of the public, and described it as a tawdry performance

FOUNDATIONS

327

— ^an ^'imitation whale made of wood.” It was, according to him, a com-
bination of political arrogance and sickening hysteria. Strong words —
but not quite in keeping with the other accusation of lack of energy and
enterprise.

Ussishkin, too, went into opposition. At the Actions Committee meet-
ing which preceded the Congress of 1923, he subjected the conduct of
our affairs to an extremely critical review, and marshaled a series of
facts concerning the attitude of the British administration in Palestine
and the difficulties resulting from it — ^all of which he laid at my door.
Kisch, Sokolow and I could only urge in reply that we were quite as
aware of all this as Mr. Ussishkin, and had taken every possible step
both in London and Jerusalem to improve matters. Sometimes we had
succeeded, sometimes not; but we vrere certainly not conscious of any
sins of omission in this respect. When we asked what Mr. Ussishkin
and his friends would have done in our place, the reply was : “Protest 1
Demand! Insist!” And that seemed to be the ultimate wisdom to be
gleaned from our critics. They seemed quite unaware that the constant
repetition of protests, demands and insistences defeats its own ends,
being both futile and undignified. I emphasized once more that the only
real answer to our difficulties in Palestine was the strengthening of our
position by bringing in the right type of immigrant in larger numbers,
by acquiring more land, by speeding up our productive work.

I realized, even then, that I had to argue in a vicious circle : in order
to get the good will of the Government we had to hasten the work of
development ; but in order to hasten the work of development we desper-
ately needed the active good will of the Government. This dilemma has
faced us, from one angle or another, throughout the last thirty years,
and I have often thought how much easier life would be if one had to
deal only with single-pronged problems, and not with the twin horns
of a dilemma.

The very painful debate with Ussishkin ended in his resignation from
the Executive and Kisch’s appointment in his stead. We were all deeply
sorry about it, and I was much distressed to hear later from Kisch that
Ussishkin’s comment had been: “I am going now — ^but I shall come
back as President of the Organization.” This did not in fact happen,
but Ussishkin continued to play a prominent part in our councils, and
later accepted the Presidency of the Jewish National Fund; as time
went on, the breach between us slowly healed.

These, then, were the struggles I faced within the Organization. They
centered on relations with England, relations with the non-Zionist
groups of the Agency-in-the-making, methods of colonization, the co-op-
erative versus the individualist colonies, private enterprise versus the
national funds, urban versus rural growth. And throughout it all the
foundations of the National Home were slowly being laid. We went

328 TRIAL AND ERROR

through very hard times in 1926, 1927 and part of 1928. The big influx
of 1925, with its large proportion of small capitalists, produced the
crisis which I had feared and warned against. The signs were there by
the end of that year; by 1926 there were six thousand unemployed in
Palestine, and by 1927 a thousand more. There were strikes, lockouts
and clashes between employers and workers. And always there was the
shortage of funds, the failure of the wealthier elements in Jewry to
respond. But underneath it all there was a steady organic growth, often
invisible at first. When the economic crisis came to an end in 1928 the
Jewish population had tripled since the close of the war; it stood at
close to one hundred and seventy thousand. Unemployment had vanished.
The lands of the Jewish National Fund had increased until they had
the lead over the old, rich PICA. The most dreadful feature of the de-
pression had been a reversal in the migratory movement; in 1927 there
were three thousand more emigrants than immigrants -a startling por-
tent. By 1928 the stream had again been reversed, and it continued to
swell. We could begin to draw breath.

Our relations with the Arabs were, on the surface at least, not alto-
gether unsatisfactory. The small upper level which constituted the
backing of the so-called Arab Executive continued its protests and
propaganda abroad; within Palestine there was quiet. Thousands of
Arab workmen were employed by Jewish farmers, and thousands more
made a good livelihood selling produce to the Jews.

Sir Herbert Samuel relinquished his post as High Commissioner in
1925, and was succeeded by Field Marshal Lord Plumer, whose pres-
tige and authority did much to discourage any mischief which the Arab
agitators were planning. Typical of his attitude is the following^ story.

During Plumer’s High Commissionership the Jewish community de-
cided to transfer the regimental colors of the Jewish Battalion of World
War I from London to Jerusalem. The colors arrived in due course,
and permission was granted by the High Commissioner to carry them
in solemn procession to the Great Synagogue of Jerusalem. As soon as
the Arab leaders heard of this, they became greatly agitated and betook
themselves in a crowd to see Lord Plumer and to remonstrate with
him. His ADC reported to him that there was a biggish crowd of Arabs
in the hall, waiting to see him, to which Plumer said : ‘Will you kindly
tell the Arab gentlemen that I have twelve chairs, and they might elect
twelve speakers. Then I could see them in comfort.’’ This was done, and
the speakers entered. In their usual manner the Arab leaders began to
protest and threaten, saying that if the procession took place they could
not be responsible for order in the city. To which Plumer promptly re-
marked : "'You are not asked to be responsible, gentlemen ; I shall be
responsible — ^and I shall be there.”

It was done in the grand manner, and it was effective. This is how a

FOUNDATIONS

329

determined administrator speaks politely and firmly to political mischief
niakers, and thwarts their intentions without resorting to a display of
force. Of course one has to be a Plumer to carry it off, and Plumer re-
mained with us less than three years — all too short a period. He was
succeeded by Sir John Chancellor, a man of much smaller caliber.

During all those years I spent the bulk of my time traveling, some-
times accompanied by my wife, sometimes alone, when she did not feel
she could leave the children, who resented my constant absence. I was
actually at home only for short intervals between trips to America,
Palestine, Germany, France, Holland and Belgium, not to speak of my
attendance at various international conferences. I was trying to build up
the movement, making contacts with governments and Jewish commu-
nities, and in the process acquiring a good many friendships in political,
literary and scientific circles in different countries. I came to feel almost
equally at home in Brussels or Paris or San Francisco. But in the late
summer or early autumn of every year there were a carefully engineered
few weeks which I spent with my wife and family on holiday.

They were quiet holidays, and always much the same : a village in the
mountains of Switzerland or the Tyrol, long walks in the hills among
the rocks and glaciers, till I felt I knew almost every stone and rock by
name; and then, as the weather in the heights deteriorated, we would
go down for a few days to Merano, to a small sanatorium. Merano had
an attraction of its own ; in those days it was off the beaten track, never
overrun with tourists, enjoying an almost perfect climate, especially in
the autumn. It was beautiful, too, full of orchards and vineyards. More-
over, it had admirable funicular railways, by which one could reach alti-
tudes of five or six thousand feet in a short time. So most of my days
were spent there walking in the mountains, enjoying the pure air and
the wonderful scenery, and returning at sunset to the sanatorium, re-
freshed and invigorated.

Thus I managed to get a few weeks off for real rest and relaxation
with my family every year. Often attempts were made to get me back
to London or elsewhere before the allotted time was up, but I always
refused to budge. My holiday was sacrosanct, devoted entirely to my
wife and children, and I grudged every interruption, however urgent. I
still believe that without these few weeks of absolute quiet I would
never have been able to carry the burden during the rest of the year.
Very occasionally I would also manage a break of a week or ten days
in the winter, spent as a rule in Switzerland; but this, when I got it,
was much more subject to interruptions. Most winters I spent in Amer-
ica or Palestine, hard at work.

C H AFTER 2 0

Attack and Repulse

The Riots oj Jp2p — Their Political Significance — Death of
Louis Marshall — The Shaw Commission Report Whitewashes
the Palestine Administration — The Simpson Report and the
Passfield White Paper — Warburg, Melchett, and I resign from
Jewish Agency — The Struggle with the Colonial Office — We
Receive Strong Non- Jewish Backing — Misinterpreting’ the
Mandate to Exclude World Jewry — The Pose of Neutrality
— Retraction of the White Paper in Ramsay Macdonald' s Letter
— Sir Arthur Wauchope Appointed High Commissioner —
Consequences — Failure of Arab ^^StrategyP

The first constituent meeting o£ the Jewish Agency opened in Zurich
on August II, 1929, and the agreement between the Zionists and the
non-Zionists was signed on the fourteenth. This meeting followed close
on the Sixteenth Zionist Congress, held in the same city; its opening,
in fact, coincided with the close of the Congress, which had lasted from
July 28 to August II. By the time the last business of Congress and
Agency had been cleared away I was quite exhausted, for I had come
to Zurich still suffering from the aftereffects of a protracted illness.

I was exhausted but happy. What the founding of the Agency meant
to the Zionist movement, what hopes I reposed in it, what labor I had
put into its creation, has already been indicated. I looked forward to,
and I needed, one of those holidays which I have described at the end
of the last chapter; and on August 23 my wife and I left Zurich for
Wengen, in Berner-Oberland, Switzerland to join our son Michael. I
remember well the happiness which I felt during the three-hour ride,
and the sense of peace and achievement which filled me. I felt free from
care, I anticipated confidently a future which would witness a great
acceleration in the upbuilding of the National Home.

We reached Wengen in the evening, and for the whole of the follow-
ing day I rested. I tried not to think of the hard years through which
we had passed. I did not even look at a newspaper. On the second morn-
ing I was awakened by the hotel boy, who brought me a telegram. The
envelope was bulky, and I had an instant premonition that it brought
bad news. I did not expect any business telegrams. I had separated

330

ATTACK AND REPULSE 331

from my friends less than two days before, and I knew they had all dis-
persed for their holidays. What could this bulky telegram mean? Only
bad news from Palestine. For several minutes I refused to open it, and
then I gave way. It began with the words ‘'The Under Secretary of
State regrets to announce . . and brought me the first news of the
Palestine pogroms of 1929, in which nearly a hundred and fifty Jews
were killed, hundreds more wounded, and great property damage done.

I was struck as by a thunderbolt. This, then, was the answer of the
Arab leadership to the Congress and the Agency meeting. They had
realized that our fortunes had taken an upward turn, that the speed of
our development in Palestine would soon follow the same curve. The
way to prevent that, they thought — ^wrongly, as we all know now — ^was
a blood bath. The means used to precipitate the riots, the appeal to re-
ligious fanaticism, the whipping up of blind mob passions, the deliberate
misrepresentation of Zionist aims — ^all this I shall not dwell on here. It
is in the record. In the record too is the story of that mixture of indif-
ference, inefficiency, and hostility on the part of the Palestine adminis-
tration which had helped give the Arab leaders their opportunity.

I began telephoning to London, but all my friends were away. I could
only reach Mrs. Philip Snowden, wife of the Chancellor of the Exche-
quer, who tried to comfort me. I felt I could not stay on in Wengen.
We made arrangements for the care of the children, and left for London.
On the day of our departure we learned that Louis Marshall, who was
still in Zurich, was gravely ill and would have to submit to a dangerous
operation. Soon after our arrival in London we received the news of
his death. This was the second blow.

It is difficult to convey the state of depression into which I was cast.
The Colonial Secretary of that time. Lord Passfield (the former Sidney
Webb) had shown extremely little sympathy for our cause, and was
very reluctant to see me on my arrival in London. I had a conversation,
at his house, with Lady Passfield (the former Beatrice Webb), in. the
presence of Josiah Wedgwood who, in those days, as always, stood
stanchly with us. What I heard from Lady Passfield was; ‘T can’t
understand why the Jews make such a fuss over a few dozen of their
people killed in Palestine. As many are killed every week in London
in traffic accidents, and no one pays any attention.”

When at last I managed to see Passfield and his friends in the Co-
lonial Office I realized at once that they would use this opportunity to
curtail Jewish immigration into Palestine. I tried next to see Ramsay
MacDonald, the Socialist Prime Minister, but in spite of the efforts of
his son, Malcolmn, who was extremely sympathetic to our cause until he
in turn became Colonial Secretary — 3 , familiar story, this — no interview
could be arranged. In fact I did not see Ramsay MacDonald until much
later, when he was attending a meeting of the League Council in Geneva.

TRIAL AND ERROR

33 ^

Meanwhile the machinery was set in motion for the political attack on
our position in Palestine. First came the Shaw Commission, sent out to
Palestine two months after the riots, to inquire into their ''immediate
causes” and to make recommendations for the future maintenance of
peace. The report which it brought in some months later merely con-
ceded that the Arabs had been the attackers ; but it said nothing about
the strange behavior of the Palestine administration which during the
attacks had issued one communique after another representing the riots
as "clashes” between Jews and Arabs. From these communiques it was
made to appear that there were two peoples at war in Palestine, with
the British administration as the neutral guardian of law^ and order.
Apart from the gross misrepresentation of the Jewish attitude which
such utterances impressed on the world, the implied exoneration of the
Arab mobs and their inciters boded ill for the future. I have said that
the Haycraft Report of 1921 contained the seed of much of our later
troubles. Here were some of the fruits.

Then came the Simpson Report. Sir John Hope Simpson and his
commission were sent out to Palestine in May 193 ^^
problems of immigration, land settlement, and development. But before
the report was issued, together with what is now called the Passfield
V/hite Paper, the Government declared publicly that it intended to sus-
pend immigration, introduce restrictive land legislation, curtail the au-
thority of the Jewish Agency and in general introduce in Palestine a
regime which made the appointment of the Simpson Commission either
a superfluity or a propaganda instrument for the Government’s prede-
termined policy.

I managed at last to see the Prime Minister. My wife and I had gone
to Geneva. During the channel crossing we met Lady Astor, whose
attitude toward our work was at that time friendly. I put our case before
her, and expressed my desire to see MacDonald, in the hope of obtain-
ing from him a promise that the proposed negative legislation should
not be put into effect. In Geneva an interview with the Prime Minister
was arranged, and in a long conversation with him I did obtain what
seemed to be a satisfactory statement. I saw other statesmen in Geneva,
Briand among them, and many of them promised me their support.

There was another meeting with the Prime Minister that spring,
with the late Lord Reading, Lord Melchett, Pinchas Rutenberg and
myself for our side, and Mr. MacDonald, Lord Passfield and a group
of senior officials for the Government. I came to that meeting with a
special grievance, the nature of which indicated the depth and persistence
of Passfield’s hostility. He had promised to have Simpson see me
before he left for Palestine, and then had broken the promise deliber-
ately. In a very polite way I charged Passfield openly with a breach of
faith. His Lordship never said a word or moved a muscle. I added one

ATTACK AND REPULSE 333

strong sentence. I said: ''One thing the Jews will never forgive, and
that is having been fooled.'' The Prime Minister smiled, and it also
brought out a broad grin on the faces of the officials. Thereupon I
turned to them and said : "I can't understand how you, as good British
patriots, don’t see the moral implications of promises given to Jews, and
I regret to see that you seem to deal with them rather frivolously,"
The grin disappeared.

It was curious to see how little the Prime Minister seemed to realize
the inconsistency of the new course with the letter and spirit of the
Mandate. And curious too was the spate of reassurances which he
offered us — as he offered them to Mr. Felix Warburg in a meeting they
had at Chequers. If either of us took those assurances seriously, he was
doomed to be bitterly disappointed. On October 21, 1930, the Govern-
ment published, simultaneously, the Hope Simpson report and the
White Paper.

This is not the place for an analysis of the Passfield White Paper.
Suffice it to say that it was considered by all Jewish friends of the
National Home, Zionist and non-Zionist alike, and by a host of non-
Jewish well-wishers, as rendering, and intending to render, our work
in Palestine impossible. There was nothing left for me but to resign
my position as the President of the Jewish Agency. In this drastic step
I had the complete support of Lord Melchett and of Felix Warburg,
who also resigned, the former as the chairman of the Council of the
Agency, the latter as a member of the Jewish Agency Administrative
Committee.

Then began an intense struggle with the Colonial Office which,
having been unable to guarantee the security of the Jewish community
in Palestine, having ignored our repeated warnings concerning the
activities of the Mufti and of his friends of the Arab Executive, having
made no attempt to correct the indifference or hostility of British offi-
cials in Palestine, now proposed to make us pay the price of its failure.
We realized that we were facing a hostile combination of forces in the
Colonial Office and in the Palestine administration, and unless it was
overcome it was futile to think of building on the foundations which
we had laid so solidly in the previous years.

There were, of course, great protests throughout the Jewish world;
they were backed by powerful figures in the non- Jewish world. Stanley
Baldwin, Sir Austen Chamberlain, Leopold Amery, General Smuts, Sir
John Simon, and a host of others, all from various points of view,
attacked the Passfield White Paper as inconsistent with the Mandate
which Great Britain had been given in Palestine. Apparently the Prime
Minister had anticipated an unfavorable reaction, but not the force and
volume of it. A few days before the issuance of the White Paper he
had, perhaps with the idea, of heading off my protests, invited the

TRIAL AND ERROR

334

Jewish Agency to appoint a committee which should consult with a
special Cabinet Committee on the Palestine policy. We accepted — ^but
that did not prevent my resignation, nor the resignations of Lord
Melchett and Mr. Warburg.

On the Cabinet Committee there were, among others, Arthur Hender-
son as chairman, and Malcolm MacDonald as secretary. On our side,
besides myself, were Leonard Stein, Harry Sacher, Harold Laski,
James de Rothschild, Professor Brodetsky and Professor Namier. On
this joint committee we fought back and forth throughout that winter.
There were two major points which we sought to establish as the firm
basis of all future action on the part of the British Government. The
first was intended to counteract the growing tendency to regard the
Mandate as something applying only to the Jews in Palestine as against
the Arabs in Palestine. I put it thus : ‘Tf the obligation of the Mandatory
is reduced to an obligation toward one hundred and seventy thousand
people as against seven hundred thousand people, a small minority
juxtaposed to a great majority, then of course everything else can
perhaps be explained. But the obligation of the Mandatory Power is
toward the Jewish people of which the one hundred and seventy thou-
sand are merely the vanguard. I must take issue, as energetically as I
can, with the formulation of the obligation of the Mandatory Power
as an obligation toward both sections of the Palestine population.’’ The
second point issued from the first, and was directed against the con-
ception that the Jewish National Home could be crystallized at the
stage which it had then reached.

A third point might be considered as having been raised by the first.
I quote again from the minutes of one of the sessions: “In paragraph
ten of the White Paper,” I said, “it is stated that 'incitements to dis-
order or disaffection will be severely punished in whatever quarter they
may originate.’ ” I saw in that paragraph the influence of the Palestine
administration, with its attitude of “neutrality” between two hostile
and two equally guilty sections of the population. I said : “Obviously the
intention of the author of the White Paper was to balance his state-
ments. If anything is said against the Arabs, something must be said
against the Jews, or vice versa. I think His Majesty’s Got^ernment must
be well aware that there is only one quarter from which disaffection,
disorder, violence and massacre have originated. We do not massacre;
we were the victims of a murderous onslaught. Not one Arab leader
has raised his voice against the inhuman treatment meted out to the
unfortunate victims.”

Lord Passfield was present at some of the committee sessions and
proved to be the head and fount of the opposition to our demands.
What effect our arguments had on the Government, and how much the

ATTACK AND REPULSE

335

change was due to the pressure of an adverse public opinion in Eng-
land and elsewhere I cannot say. But on February 13, 1931, there was
an official reversal of policy. It did not take the form of a retraction of
the White Paper — ^that would have meant a loss of face — ^but of a letter
addressed to me by the Prime Minister, read in the House of Commons
and printed in Hansard. I considered that the letter rectified the situation
— the form was unimportant — and I so indicated to the Prime Minister.

I was to be bitterly attacked in the Zionist Congress of that year
for accepting a letter in place of another White Paper. But whether I
was right or not in my acceptance may be judged by a simple fact: it
was under MacDonald’s letter to me that the change came about in the
Government’s attitude, and in the attitude of the Palestine administra-
tion, which enabled us to make the magnificent gains of the ensuing
years. It was under MacDonald’s letter that Jewish immigration into
Palestine was permitted to reach figures like forty thousand for 1934
and sixty-two thousand for 1935, figures undreamed of in 1930. Jabo-
tinsky, the extremist, testifying before the Shaw Commission, had set
thirty thousand a year as a satisfactory figure.

The first indication that I had of the seriousness of MacDonald’s
intentions was when he consulted me with regard to the appointment
of a new High Commissioner to replace Sir John Chancellor. He said
he realized how much depended on the choice of the man, and added,
"T would like to appoint a General, but one who does it with his head,
not his feet.” The next High Commissioner for Palestine was Sir
Arthur Wauchope, who assumed office in 1931, and under whom the
country made its greatest advance.

Two remarks may be added regarding the riots of 1929 and the
Passfield White Paper. The riots were the strongest effort made up
till that time by the Arab leaders to frighten us, by mob action, from
continuing with our work in Palestine. They failed. And if the riots
were intended, whatever their effect on our nerves, to overthrow the
structure of the National Home, they came too late. We had built too
solidly and too well.

Similarly, the Passfield White Paper may be regarded as the most
concerted effort — until the White Paper of 1939 — on the part of a
British Government to retract the promise made to the Jewish people
in the Balfour Declaration. That attack, too, was successfully repulsed.
The solid structure of the National Home in the making was paralleled
by the solid support we had in public opinion. That there is an organic
relationship between the two is the essence of my ''political” philosophy.
Had we, in the years between 1922 and 1929, concentrated on obtaining
statements, declarations, charters and promises, to the neglect of our
physical growth, we should perhaps not have been able to withstand the

336 TRIAL AND ERROR

sheer physical shock of the riots. Then the political assault would have
found no resistance either in us or in public opinion. The dismal inci-
dents of 1929 and 1930 were a severe test of our system and methods,
which emerged triumphant.

CHAPTER go

Demission

Zionist Congress of ip3i — Revisionists and Mizrachi Head
Opposition — Vote of No Confidence — The Meaning 'of the
Struggle — "'Short Cuf’ Versus Organic Growth — Sokolow
Elected President — I Return to Science — Richard WillstatteVs
Kindness — Scientific Work for Palestine — The Laboratory
in Holborn — No Getting Away from Zionist Work — Colonial
Trust in Difficulties — I Accept Presidency of English Zionist
Federation — Other Obligations — Refugee Work and Youth
Aliyah — Sir Arthur Wauchope,

I COME now to an incident in my life on which I look back with little
pleasure, and write about with some distaste: my demission from the
Presidency of the Zionist Organization at the Congress in July 1931.

In spite of . the fact that the Ramsay MacDonald letter had restored
our political position and initiated a period of peace, prosperity and
great immigration into Palestine, the excitement originally created by
the Passfield White Paper continued to exercise the minds of the Zion-
ists, and particularly of the Revisionists, led by Jabotinsky. The latter
spoke of the letter contemptuously, in part because it was only a letter ;
they demanded British official endorsement of a clear-cut Revisionist
policy, and the acceptance of anything short of that maximum — ^which
meant a Jewish State on both sides of the Jordan, with all that this
implies — ^they declared to be political weakness, cowardice and betrayal.
As the Congress of 1931 approached I became the butt of ever-mounting
attacks, and the occasion for a pernicious extremist propaganda. I held
my ground and continued to point out that in a movement like ours the
center of gravity is not an exaggerated political program, but work —
colonization, education, immigration, and the maintenance of decent re-
lations with the Mandatory Power. Important, too, was the enlighten-
ment of public opinion in Britain, America and the rest of the world as
to our aims and aspirations; this could not result from confusing the
issues by impractical demands which excited the Arabs and helped to
precipitate troubles which affected the attitude of the Mandatory Power.

My admonitions were in vain. The politicians at the Congress were
determined to initiate a debate on “the ultimate aims of the Zionist

337

TRIAL AND ERROR

338

movement” as if that had any relevance at the moment, and as if any
sort of declaration would increase our strength or achievements by one
iota. It is difficult to say if this debate was meant sincerely, and was the
expression of a desire to fix the Zionist program for all time, and to
provide guidance for future generations, or whether it was simply a
means to provoke my opposition, and thus facilitate my resignation from
office. If the latter, it was the more unjust — I permit myself to say even
indecent — in that I announced, in my opening address, my intention of
resigning because of the precarious state of my health, which was patent
to everybody. My doctors had, in fact, remonstrated with me severely
on the dangers of even attending the Congress.

In spite of this, the Congress insisted on going through the motion
of passing a resolution of nonconfidence in my policy by a roll-call vote,
in which the Revisionists under Jabotinsky took the leading part, with
the Misrachiy the religious wing of the movement, strongly supporting.

The conflict which thus reached an unnecessary denouement had of
course been going on in the movement for years: It was the conflict
between those who believed that Palestine can be built up only the hard
way, by meticulous attention to every object, who believed that in this
slow and difficult struggle with the marshes and rocks of Palestine lies
the great challenge to the creative forces of the Jewish people, its re-
demption from the abnormalities of exile, and those who yielded to those
very abnormalities, seeking to live by a sort of continuous miracle,
snatching at occasions as they presented themselves, and believing that
these accidental smiles of fortune constitute a real way of life. I felt that
all these political formulas, even if granted to us by the powers that were,
would be no use to us, might possibly even be harmful as long as they
were not the product of hard work put into the soil of Palestine. Nahalal,
Daganiah, the University, the Rutenberg electrical works, the Dead Sea
Concession, meant much more to me politically than all the promises of
great governments or great political parties. It was not lack of respect
for governments and parties, nor an underrating of the value of political
pronouncements. But to me a pronouncement is real only if it is matched
by performance in Palestine. The pronouncement depends on others, the
performance is entirely our own. This is the essence of my Zionist life.
My guiding principle was the famous saying of Goethe :

Was du , ereril?st tH)% jJHnen Vdtern,

Erwirh es^^um ‘es su besitsen.

The others believed only in the Erhe, and therefore were always
claiming their rights; they wanted the easy road, the road paved with
the promises of others. I believed in the path trodden out by our own
feet, however wounded the feet might be.

I said to the Congress: "The walls of Jericho fell to the sound of

DEMISSION

339

shouts and trumpets. I never heard of walls being raised by that means.”

Of course it was not only a theoretical political opposition which I
faced. It was also the disappointment of middle-class groups which really
believed that but for me they would quickly have transformed Palestine
into a land of golden economic opportunity for themselves and thou-
sands of others. To me this too was utter lack of realism. I said to the
Congress: 'T have heard critics of the Jewish Agency sneer at what
they call the old 'Chibath Zion' policy of 'another dunam and another
dunam, another Jew and another Jew, another , cow and another goat
and two more houses in Gederah.’ If there is any other way of building
a house save brick by brick, I do not know it. If there is another way of
building up a country save dunam by dunam, man by man, and farm-
stead by farmstead, again I do not know it. One man may follow another,
one dunam be added to another, after a long interval or after a short
one — that is a question of degree, and determined not by politics alone,
but in a far greater degree by economics.” And to those critics I again
said: "Private capital can establish individual enterprises, but it is for
national capital to create conditions,” and, "But for the work of the
Jewish Agency and the National Funds there would even now be no
suggestion of a 'business basis' for the development of Palestine by
the operation of natural economic laws, and no prospect of such a
development within any measurable period of time.”

At this Congress I found myself in a minority, with only the laborites
and a few of the general Zionists understanding me. I sat through the
whole performance, until the last man had voted. When it was finished,
and some tactless person applauded my so-called downfall, the feeling
came over me that here and now the tablets of the law should be broken,
though I had neither the strength nor the moral stature of the great
lawgiver,

I left the hall with my wife and a handful of close friends and went
for a stroll in Basle. I was immediately joined by Bialik, very tense
and very depressed. He said : "Pve been watching the hands which were
lifted against you. They were the hands of men whom you have not
invited to your house, whom you have not asked to share the company
of those you cultivate, the hands of people who have not sat at your
dinner table — ^the hands of those who never understood and never will
understand the depths that separate you from them. Don't be sad. What
they have done will disappear, what you have done will stand forever."
We parted with a friendly embrace and Bialik added : "I have nothing
more to do in Basle, I leave the city today.”

The curious outcome of the Congress was the election of Sokolow
to the Presidency: curious because Sokolow (like Brodetsky and others
who were re-elected) had been closely identified with me since 1916,
not only in the general line of work but in almost every detail. Jabotin-

3^0 TRIAL AND ERROR

sky had resigned. Dr. Soloveitchik, the Lithuanian delegate, had re-
signed: Sokolow had co-operated in loyal agreement. To create an
antithesis between Sokolow and me was the height of inanity and
showed up the artificiality of the setup. But if I was wryly amused,
Jabotinsky was bitterly disappointed. He had always lived in the illu-
sion that I was the one who stood in the way of his ascent to the Presi-
dency. After the vote was taken Jabotinsky sent my wife^ a little
scribble, “I am proud of my friends,” meaning us both. My wife wrote
back on the scribble : “Thanks for condolences ; we are not dead yet.”
It was Jabotinsky’s belief that if I went down, he would go up. And it
must have been galling to him to see the election go to Sokolow, for
whom he had very little respect— if he did not actually_ despise him. It
was, I think, the feeling of my opponents that the pliability of Sokolow
would make it easier for them to give the movement the direction they
had in mind.

"The break in my life, produced by my demission, was not without its
blessings. It was not a complete break, as will soon be evident, but it
did relieve me of a vast burden of labor. I tried to fill the vacuum as
quickly as possible. I directed my attention to other matters; I felt it
would be dangerous for me to indulge in contemplation and resentaent
and become bitter. I fought against such emotions, though they continued
to well up in my subconscious.

I was particularly sorry for my children, who took the turn of events
as a bitter affront to their father, who in their opinion had given up the
whole of his life to the movement, to their detriment. They had become
resigned to a situation which deprived them of my company for long
stretches every year, but they were deeply shocked by what they re-
garded as the ingratitude with which I was rewarded; and they were
extremely happy when I announced to them my intention of opening a
laboratory in London, and going back to my chemistry, which I had
neglected for so many years.

It was, by the way, not an easy decision. I was now in my fifty-eighth
year. I had not been in a laboratory — except on a chance visit — for about
thirteen years. The science of chemistry had made enormous advances
in that time, and I had followed the literature only in a desultory fash-
ion. It was a psychological effort to revert to quiet laboratory work
after the stormy and adventurous life of the preceding thirteen years.
And if I did know something about the latest developments in science,
I had lost contact with practical work and had to become accustomed
afresh to manipulating chemical apparatus and carrying out the usual
operations. It is difficult to explain to a layman how painful and arduous
a task it is to restart this sort of professional occupation in one’s mature

DEMISSION

341 ■

years, and to refind one’s way in the literature of the profession, which
in the interval had grown to an immense volume.

But, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, there came to my assistance a
guide who, by his authority and kindness, made the transition as pleasant
and easy as possible.

It happened that at about that time Professor Richard Willstatter,
one of the greatest modern chemists, came to London to receive the
Gold Medal of the Royal Society. I had met him only once before, and
fleetingly. I discovered in him now a delightful companion and a true
friend. His knowledge of chemistry and chemical problems was ency-
clopedic, and as unlimited as the kindness he showed me. I had been told
that he was pedantic and rather geheimratisch ; he did not make me feel
that at all, and I confessed to him all my difficulties. After a severe cross-
examination of me, he agreed that we should collaborate on a piece of
work in a field which was very familiar to him and on which he had
done extensive work. I took over only a small corner of this vast field,
and was able after a few years to make something practical of it — a
vegetable foodstuff which is now being produced on a considerable scale
in America and may shortly be produced in other countries.

Willstatter was consistently helpful to me, and his collaboration not
only helped to set me on my feet again, scientifically speaking, but en-
abled me to see him whenever I was in the vicinity of his city, Munich.

There were two factors which urged me on in this change. First, my
intrinsic relation to science, which had been part of my life since my
boyhood; second, my feeling that in one way or another it had some-
thing to do with the building of Palestine. I was already thinking, then,
of a research institute which should work in combination with the
Agricultural Experimental Station at Rehovoth — and of something
larger, and of wider scope, too. And it was during the period when I was
out of office that the Daniel Sieff Research Institute was founded, to be
followed many years later by the Weizmann Institute of Science.

The break, I said, was not a complete one. It could not be, of course.
There was only a considerable shift of emphasis. I opened up a modest
laboratory at 6 Featherstone Buildings, Holborn, in an old house belong-
ing to a friend who had been my patent agent for many years. The
laboratory was not particularly well fitted out, but it served my pur-
poses, at least at the beginning. I also linked up again with an old friend
and assistant, Mr. H. Davies, who had been with me in Manchester and
who had worked with me during the first years of World War I. It
began to look again like old times. I enjoyed immensely going to .the
laboratory every day and returning home in the evening. It reminded
me very much of my years at Manchester University. My existence was
— at least by comparison with the in-between years — ^unshackled and
untrammeled. The echoes of Zionist problems penetrated only faintly

342 TRIAL AND ERROR

the walls of my laboratory and visitors from the nonscientific world who
descended on me there usually got a cold reception. Gradually the useful
rumor got around that to visit me in my lab was not the way to get
anything out of me.

However, there were plenty of visits from Zionist friends at our
home, and plenty of pressure to keep me at Zionist tasks. Indeed, only
a few days after the Congress, when we were resting at Bad Gastein, a
delegation of the laborites visited me, and urged me to take up the
leadership of the opposition. This I refused categorically. But a plea of
another kind I could not turn down.

We had spent about two weeks in Bad Gastein, and had gone with
the children on to Karersee, a charming spot in the Italian Tyrol above
Bolzano. No sooner had we settled down there than I began to receive
alarming telegrams from the directorate of The Jewish Colonial Trust in
London, the bank of the Zionist Organization, which indicated that it
was in an extremely precarious position. It was the middle of the world
depression and the bank had practically no liquid assets ; if a run came,
it might mean ruin, and the majority of the depositors were poorer Jews
of the East End of London.

It was suggested to me that I go to Paris and talk to Baron Edmond
de Rothschild, urging him to extend a helping hand. I felt I had no right
to worry the old gentleman, but it was impossible to refuse the plea of
the bank for assistance, and there was no one else to turn to 1 So I left
my holiday resort and traveled a long way to Paris. I went in vain.
The Baron said : ^'All banks are at present in a critical condition. The
difference between our bank and others is that ours has no friends to
help it through.'" He pointed out that when we had come to him two
years previously asking him to help us meet the educational budget in
Palestine, he had given us something like one hundred fifty thousand
dollars. But he was not prepared to support a financial instrument which
was perhaps being mismanaged. All I got from him on this occasion was
the advice to sell whatever securities could he sold — ^for instance some
shares of the Rutenberg Concession — and thus increase the liquidity of
the bank.

But my visit was not a dead loss. I discovered while in Paris that the
Baron's organization, PICA, owed the Colonial Trust a sum of one
hundred thousand dollars, about which the Trust had completely for-
gotten ! Between that and the sale of some securities a margin of liquidity
was created for the bank.

Back I went to my family, and we decided to go to Jugoslavia and
see the Dalmatian coast. We started out in our car, and got as far as
Abbazia, on the Jugoslav frontier. There I found another series of
frantic telegrams, imploring me to return to London and take counsel
with the directors — or such of them as were not hors de combat; for
some had fallen ill and others had lost their heads.

DEMISSION

343

I gave way again, and persuaded my family to abandon the Jugoslav
tour and go instead to Spain. We knew of a nice, quiet place, Sitges, on
the coast near Barcelona. There they would be safe and comfortable,
and there I would join them as soon as possible. Meanwhile I set off
for London.

There we were able to float a loan on the basis of securities, and
another liquid fund of about three hundred thousand dollars was created
which enable^ the bank to ride out the depression. Today the Jewish
Colonial Trust is more secure than it ever was.

I have put in the foregoing incident as a sort of first corrective for any
reader who might be under the impression that stepping out of office
meant a repudiation of Zionist responsibilities. Actually I had plenty to
do outside the laboratory; and my laboratory work, too, soon suffered
long interruptions, to the great distress of my children, who considered
my absences as dangerous bits of backsliding.

I found it impossible, in those years of crisis — as in fact I had found
it impossible in an earlier crisis, that which followed the Kishinev and
other pogroms thirty years before — ^to abstract myself even temporarily
from Jewish life. In those days I had no sooner settled to my laboratory
work at Manchester University, than I began to seek out the local
Zionists. Now, in 1931, and the following years, I had no sooner got
into the swing of laboratory routine, than I found myself loaded with
outside obligations. I could not refuse the request of the British Zionists
to accept the Presidency of their federation. Still less was it possible to
withhold my assistance from the Central Bureau for the Settlement of
German Jews, created by the Jewish Agency. I became the chairman of
that body, and President of Youth Aliyah. In the summer of 1932 I
interrupted my scientific work for five months in order to tour South
Africa for the Zionist Funds; the Executive was passing through a
financial crisis and here again I felt that I could not evade my duty.

Another, shorter interruption occurred the following year. In the
spring of 1933 I received a number of urgent telegrams from Meyer W.
Weisgal, who was then arranging ‘'Jewish Day’' at the Century of
Progress Fair in Chicago, offering me one hundred thousand dollars for
the refugee funds. All he wanted in exchange was that I should deliver
a single address at the celebrations in Chicago. I was very much tempted,
both for the sake of the Funds and out of regard for the man.

Weisgal is the foremost of the younger friends I have in America.
A man of outstanding ability and integrity, with a phenomenal capacity
for work, he finds nothing too difficult to undertake when there is service
to be rendered to the movement. In these enterprises he spends himself
recklessly, and his loyalty and friendship are equaled only by his energy.
He has been a moving spirit in the Zionist movement for many years,
and at present is one of the chief initiators of the Weizmann Institute of
Science m Palestine. I accepted his offer in 1933, made the round trip of

344

TRIAL AND ERROR

some eight thousand miles for the sake of a single appearance, and
returned with the addition of one hundred thousand dollars to refugee
funds.

Now I am not going to pretend that all of these assignments were
merely chores. Some of them were, of course; others were not. Our
visit to South Africa, for instance, to which I devote a brief chapter, had
other compensations besides the sums it brought in for the Keren
Hayesod, Then there were types of work which, being an amalgam of
Zionist work, German refugee settlement work and scientific work, could
not be wholly described as '‘interruptions’' of the last of these. Such, for
instance, was the creation of the Daniel Sieff Research Institute in
Rehovoth, which I shall describe at some length further on.

I took no part in the inner political struggles of the Zionist Organiza-
tion and did not even attend the eighteenth Congress, that of 1933.
I was extremely chary of lending color to any accusation that I was
"planning a return,” or that I was in any way hampering the activities
of the Executive then in power.

It was with a certain discomfort that I even went to see Sir Arthur
Wauchope, the new High Commissioner for Palestine, before he left to
take up his post in the autumn of 1931, and I did so only at his invita-
tion. I went to him, and later corresponded with him, in my private
capacity as one who had paid more than twenty visits, of varying dura-
tion, to Palestine in the preceding thirteen years, and had some knowl-
edge of the country. After 1935, the year of my return to office, our
contacts were official; but during the period now under review, 1931 to
1935, I saw him either in a private capacity, or as the head of the Sieff
Institute ; • and it is pleasant, in spite of strong differences which de-
veloped between us toward the end of his regime, to pay wholehearted
tribute to him. Sir Arthur was a distinguished administrator and
scholar, perhaps the best High Commissioner Palestine has had, and I
believe, a proof of Ramsay MacDonald’s serious effort to undo the harm
of the Passfield White Paper. I cannot doubt that he was given the right
sort of send-off by the Prime Minister, and he happened to be the kind
of man who could be influenced in the right direction. In contradistinc-
tion to previous High Commissioners, he really tried to understand the
moral and ethical values underlying the Zionist movement and the work
in Palestine. He was deeply moved by many features of the life there,
such as the kibuf^im, and even after he left office he gave frequent
expression to his feelings in England, praising the kvutsoth and kibut^
zim as a new way of life which should be emulated in other countries,
England included, even if it meant adapting it to specific English condi-
tions. He was much attracted by certain leaders in the movement, like
young Arlosoroff, and the older Shmarya Levin. He valued greatly the
scientific approach to our agricultural program, and used to be a fre-

DEMISSION

345

quent visitor at the Agricultural Experimental Station in Rehovoth,
where he helped endow a laboratory for plant physiology which bears
his name,

I believe that the differences which did develop between him and the
Zionists toward the end of his regime were owing to the great deteriora-
tion in the general policy of England, and in the increasing tendency
toward appeasement which set in with the Abyssinian war in 1935,
extended to Spain and then reached Palestine. I do not believe that of
his own accord Wauchope would have taken the stand he did in certain
matters which will be related in their turn. We remember him in Pales-
tine as a friend, an intellectual, a soldier, an administrator, and a states-
man.

CHAPTER 31

A Strange National Home

Visit to South Africa — Its Jewish Community — The Remark-
able Game Reserve,

South Africa was a new experience for my wife and myself.
We were attracted by the idea of a visit to the country of Smuts, who
had played such a noble part in the first stages of our movement and
whose generous interest had, and has, continued unabated. The official
attitude toward us was thoroughly cordial. Smuts and Herzog and their
colleagues received us most kindly. Herzog was perhaps more formal,
Smuts — ^who was not then in power — ^treated us as old, trusted friends.

I found myself in an unusual Jewish community scattered over a wide
subcontinent in small groups, but united in Zionist spirit. South African
Jewry was singularly free from the so-called assimilationist taint. There
were practically no German Jews in the country, and the few exceptions
were mostly diamond or gold magnates who were isolated or had
isolated themselves, and had little or no contact with the majority of
Jewry. The Jews of South Africa were preponderantly — in fact almost
exclusively — from Kovno, or Vilna, or Minsk and the little places in
between these Jewish centers. The townlet of Shavli seems, for some
unknown reason, to have provided South Africa with great numbers of
Jews — it was a puzzle to me how such a small place could have produced
such a large emigration.

The South African Jews were kindly, hard-working, intelligent
people, and what one may term organic Zionists. If Russian Jewry had
not had its life interrupted by the advent of bolshevism, it would prob-
ably have developed on the pattern of South African Jewry. It was a
pleasure to watch and hear those Jews. Remote as they were from the
great stream of Jewish life, the arrival of a visitor from Europe was a
tremendous occasion, and the whole life of the community revolved
about the event.

I met many types of modest, quiet workers to whom Zionism was the
whole of their existence. There were not too many wealthy individuals,
but the average level of prosperity was fair. There were not too many
intellectuals among them, either, but the few that one met were genuine

346

A STRANGE NATIONAL HOME

347

and attractive. One found both hospitality and comfort in their company.

From the technical point of view the trip was well organized but
extremely trying, as one had to visit small communities scattered over
a vast subcontinent. Still, we went religiously through our duties, and
at the end were satisfied with the results, which were financially quite
considerable.

We had few pauses or relaxations in those five months, but there was
one which calls for special and somewhat detailed mention, and that was
a visit to the famous game reserve. This is a unique institution. It was
founded by Kruger, who had been greatly concerned over the rapid
disappearance of the South African fauna due to the habits of the early
Dutch settlers, who used to kill wild and tame beasts indiscriminately.
He had therefore decided to set aside a territory amounting to something
like eight thousand square miles for the preservation of animal life.
Within that area the shooting of animals, or their molestation in any
way, was forbidden, and they lived a free and unmolested life. And the
animals knew their privileges! They walked about in the presence of
human beings freely and unconcernedly, and driving through this vast
place was one continuous excitement.

Naturally one had to have guides and guns — our guide, and a great
expert, was a Lithuanian Jew — ^but the danger was slight if one did not
interfere with the animals. There were no roads in the real sense of the
word, but there w^ere so-called summer tracks, and as you drove along
casually you could meet anything from a specimen of the famous South
African springbok to a python curled up on a tree, or a pride of lions.
Or suddenly there would break on your ears the ringing and thundering
noise of a herd of elephants on the march. If one was particularly ob-
servant one saw something of the social life of the jungle.

So, for instance, I once noticed in passing an old wildebeest, squatting
abandoned under a tree. It looked dejected and crestfallen, the very
personification — ^if I may use that word — of melancholy. Struck by its
appearance, I asked the guide for the meaning of the phenomenon. He
told me that this was an old bull who until a little while ago had been
the leader of his herd. He had grown old, and had been ousted by a
younger and more energetic successor. He had had to leave the herd,
and he lived now in absolute isolation, waiting for the lions to come
along and t^r him to pieces. It all sounded so human.

We spent three days on the game reserve, and it so happened that
during our visit the lions — they were always the high point of a visit —
were making themselves scarce. We traveled about a good bit, but they
did not put in an appearance and we thought we were going to be dis-
appointed. I was ready to give up, but my wife was a little more per-
sistent. Late in the third night we were awakened in our hut by a sound
of prowling and growling, and at about 4 a.m. excited Kaffir boys

348 TRIAL AND ERROR

crowded about our entrance, conveying the news that lions were in the
vicinity.

We promptly put on our clothes, threw ourselves into the car, and
drove in the direction indicated. Sure enough, before long, we came
across a magnificent-looking lion standing in the middle of the road like
a bronze statue, and occasionally throwing a contemptuous glance at
our car. We were admonished not to let our rifles protrude from the car
— ^the lions do not like the sight of them. We could not move forward,
so we stood still about twenty yards away from the lion and awaited
his pleasure.

About ten minutes passed and the lion decided to leave the middle of
the road ; he went into the grass which screened him almost completely
from our sight, its color being the same as that of his tawny skin. Look-
ing more attentively we suddenly noticed two lionesses crouching there,
with the male lion circling about them, looking occasionally in our direc-
tion and emitting a growl. After observing this scene for about fifteen
minutes we backed away and drove off. We had had a good view of
lions and could leave with a clear conscience.

It must be of particular interest — and a source of enormous satisfac-
tion — to a naturalist to spend some time in the reserve and to observe
all this animal life, in a state of nature, at close range. As for myself,
I could not help reflecting about something else ; here were these won-
derful animals with a beautiful home reserved for them, with trees,
water, grass, food, going about unmolested, as free citizens, establishing
their own laws, habits and customs, knowing their way about, probably
having their own language, and wise to the natural dangers of their
environment. I was told, for instance, that a tiny springbok would ap-
proach a lion quite freely when it happened to know — as it could by
instinct — ^that the lion had had his fill, and therefore would not attack it.
Not so, however, with the leopard, which kills for the sake of killing,
and is therefore always shunned by the springbok. This and more I
heard from my guide on the habits of the animals in the reserve.

Here they were, I thought, in their home, which in area is only
slightly smaller than Palestine; they are protected, nature offers them
generously of her gifts, and they have no Arab problem. ... It must be
a wonderful thing to be an animal on the South African game reserve:
much better than being a Jew in Warsaw — or even in London.

CHAPTER 32

Scientists — and Others

Hitler^s Advent to Power — The Tragedy oj German Jewry —
My Work with the Central Bureau for the Settlement oj
German Jews — The Ousting oj the Scientists among Others —
Richard Willstatter Opens Sieff Institute in Palestine, Refuses
Post with Us, Returns to Germany — Is Expelled — Fritz
Haber's Brilliant Career — His Expulsion from Germany —
Turns to Us, too Late — Gemnan Jewish Scientists and Pales-
tine — Jewish Tradition and Science — Dr. David Bergmann
Joins Us — The German Jews and Palestine — Their Contri-
bution to the Homeland.

The year 1933, the year of Hitler’s advent to power, marked the
beginning of the last frightful phase in the greatest catastrophe that has
ever befallen the Jewish people. We did not anticipate the full horror
of the episode ; but enough was already happening, even in the preceding
years, to spur us to the most strenuous efforts.

When I accepted the chairmanship of the Central Bureau for the
Settlement of German Jews, I had no particular qualifications for the
work. But the need was so urgent, the human suffering so great, and
the men and women who sought help so pathetic in the misfortune
which had come over them like a tidal wave, that there could be no
question of preparing oneself specifically for the job. One just did the
best one could; and I found that my best would be connected with
Palestine. So my work was divided into two parts, one general, the
other specifically Palestinian. The pressure of need and the development
of circumstances brought a welcome unity into the work.

My work ran parallel with that of the Youth Aliyah, which was
headed by one of the most remarkable figures in modern Jewish history —
Henrietta Szold. She was seventy-three years of age, and her life had
been filled with many labors — ^literary, educational and Zionist. In the
founding of Hadassah, the American Women’s Zionist Organization, she
had made an immense contribution to the social and political develop-
ment of the Jewish Homeland; and to climax her work and that of her
organization, she had settled in Palestine, where her energy, wisdom
and devotion were an inspiration to the community. At an age well

349

TRIAL AND ERROR

350

beyond that of usual retirement from public life, she undertook and
carried through with magnificent effectiveness the direction of Youth
AHyah, one of the most important Zionist tasks of the last fifteen years.
She carried on virtually to the day of her death, in 1945-

To return to my particular task in that period of calamity: The
catastrophe in Germany had of course destroyed the careers of a
great many brilliant young scientists who were, almost at a moment’s
notice, uprooted from their positions and thrown into the street. Nor
was this true of the younger people alone. Men of outstanding reputation
and achievement, who had rendered invaluable service to science — and
to Germany — ^were forced out one after the other; and often it was
difficult to say which was the deeper, the external and physical tragedy,
or the internal and spiritual. Two such men stand out in my mind, not
because their fate was exceptional, but because of my more intimate
contact with them. They are Richard Willstatter and Fritz Haber.

Of Willstatter’s kindness to me in 1931, when I opened my little
laboratory, I have already told. He was by that time no longer on the
faculty of Munich University, but not because of governmental action.
At a meeting of the university senate some time in 1928 a discussion
had arisen about the appointment of a mineralogist. A candidate was
proposed, a front rank mineralogist by the name of Goldschmidt. As soon
as the name was mentioned a murmur arose in the meeting and someone
remarked: "Wieder ein JudeT (another Jew). Without saying a word
Willstatter rose, collected his papers and left the room. He never crossed
the threshold of the university again, this despite the repeated entreaties
of his colleagues and of the Bavarian Government. It was felt — ^this was
still 1928 — ^that he was too valuable a man to lose, that his withdrawal
was a severe blow to the prestige of the university.

It was a tragedy for Willstatter to be deprived of the laboratory in
which he had been accustomed to work, but he found a place in the
Munich Academy of Science. Not that he ever entered that place either !
He directed the work from the outside, and as he told me with a sad
smile in 1931, he would be on the telephone with his assistant for between
an hour and two hours every day. I could just about see it in my mind’s
eye. He was extremely exact and attentive to the slightest detail, and
although laconic in speech and writing his explanations were always
lengthy because of their completeness. He missed the laboratory work all
the more because his manipulative skill was magnificent, just as his
methods were interesting, original, exact, and always directed toward
the clarification of some important problem. Such was, for instance, his
classical research on the constitution and function of chlorophyll in
plants and its relation to the hemoglobin of the blood. Although his
reputation was immense, and he was a Nobel prize winner, he was
modest, unassuming and retiring in character; he often reminded me
of the old-time venerable type of great Jewish Rabbi.

SCIENTISTS — AND OTHERS 351

For a long time Willstatter refused — in spite of his experience in
1928 and his violent reaction to it — ^to understand what was taking place
in Germany. I saw him in Munich, at the end of 1932, and again in
Zurich and Paris, in 1933, after Hitler had come to power; but though
deeply disturbed, he would not believe that the German people and
government would go any further in their anti-Jewishness. We dis-
cussed the Daniel Sieff Research Institute, which was then in process
of construction; he was immensely interested and generous with his
advice. He readily accepted my invitation to preside at the opening,
but to my repeated and insistent pleas that he leave Germany and come
to us in Palestine, he turned a deaf ear. He came to the opening of the
Institute and returned to Germany (in 1934 1 ). He still felt that he was
protected by his reputation and by the devotion of the Munich public.

I was not the only one to plead with him to stay with us. I remember
how Simon Marks, among others, urged him to accept the director-
ship of the new Institute, assuring him of a first-class laboratory, all the
buildings and apparatus he wanted, and a staff of eager and able assist-
ants. Some of his pupils were already with us. No, he was not to be
moved.

The opening of the Sieff Institute coincided with the Passover, and I
took Willstatter up to Haifa to attend the Seder at my mother’s house.
Our Seder was always a ratlier lively performance, very jolly and un-
conventional, with some thirty-odd members of the family at table. The
celebration reached its critical point when our house was suddenly sur-
rounded by a tremendous crowd of workers, men and women — there
must have been over two thousand of them — ^who had come from their
own Seders to greet us for the festival. They filled the whole street,
singing Hebrew songs and dancing the hora. Willstatter and I were half-
pulied, half-carried down from the balcony on which we stood watching,
and forced into the dance. Very curious indeed it was to watch the old
German professor trying to dance a hora surrounded by chalutsim and
chalutEOth singing and clapping their hands. I know he enjoyed the
experience. But nothing of all this induced him to change his mind. His
last word on the subject was: ‘T know that Germany has gone mad,
but if a mother falls ill it is not a reason for her children to leave her.
My home is Germany, my university, in spite of what has happened, is
in Munich. I must return.”

He actually stayed on in Germany until the outbreak of the war in
1939. Then he was expelled, and took up his residence in Locarno, in
near-by Switzerland. There he found a small apartment of two or three
rooms, and there he lived in complete isolation. I visited him several
times. Of his possessions nothing was rescued but his library, which his
old housekeeper had carried off to Stuttgart. He occupied himself, during
the closing years of his life, with the writing of his autobiography, and
died toward the end of the war. His obstinacy in not acceding to our

TRIAL AND ERROR

35 ^

request was a great loss to Palestine and, I think, a great loss to science.

Fritz Haber’s was the second case. Haber was a great friend of
Willstatter, though by nature and temperament very different from him.
He too was a Nobel prize winner, and responsible for one of the biggest
technical successes of the age, namely, the conversion of the nitrogen of
the air into ammonia and nitric acid. These two chemicals are essential
ingredients in the making not only of explosives, but also of artificial
fertilizer, which thus became accessible in large quantities at a low price.
Unlike Willstatter, Haber was lacking in any Jewish self-respect. He
had converted to Christianity and had pulled all his family with him
along the road to apostasy. Long before I met him I had other reasons
to feel prejudiced against him. It will be remembered that when I made
my first visit to America, in 1921, I had been fortunate enough to enlist
the co-operation of Einstein. I learned later that Haber had done all he
could to dissuade Einstein from joining me; he said, among other things,
that Einstein would be doing untold harm to his career and to the name
of the institute of which he was a distinguished member if he threw in
his lot with the Zionists, and particularly with such a pronounced Zionist
as myself.

I therefore had no desire to meet Haber ; nor was there any occasion
of an impersonal kind since his field of chemistry — chiefly that of in-
organic materials — was remote from mine. But as it happened Haber’s
son, who was also a chemist, was employed by my brother-in-law, Josef
Blumenfeld, a distinguished industrial chemist in Paris, and once, during
a visit to London, Blumenfeld brought the Habers, father and son, to
see me. I was already busy — at any rate in my mind — ^with the founding
of the Sieff Institute, and by that time Haber’s anti-Zionist prejudices
must have been wearing off, perhaps under the influence of developments
in Germany. I found him, somewhat to my surprise, extremely affable.
He even invited me to visit him at his research institute, which had the
high-sounding name of Kaiser Wilhelm Forschungs Institut, in Dahlem,
which I did toward the end of 1932, on one of my visits to Berlin.

It was a magnificent collection of laboratories, superbly equipped,
and many sided in its program, and Haber was enthroned as dictator.
He guided me through building after building, and after the long tour
of inspection invited me to lunch with him at his villa in Dahlem. He was
not only hospitable ; he was actually interested in my work in Palestine.
Frequently, in the course of our conversation on technical matters, he
would throw in the words: "'Well, Dr. Weizmann, you might try to
introduce that in Palestine.” He repeated several times that one of the
greatest factors in the development of Palestine might be found in tech-
nical botany. This is a combination of plant physiology, genetics and
kindred sciences, which was represented in Dahlem both by great labora-
tories and by first-class men conducting them. I was comparing in my

SCIENTISTS— AND OTHERS

353

mind those mighty institutions which served the agriculture of Germany
with our little Agricultural Research Station at Rehovoth, and hoping
that the new Institute which I contemplated might help to fill some of
the gaps in our reconstruction.

I left Dahlem heavy hearted and filled with forebodings, which I
remember communicating to my wife on my return to London.

Not long afterward, I received a telephone call at my home in London
from Haber. He was in the city, staying at the Russell Hotel. He had
had to leave Berlin precipitately, stripped of everything — ^position, for-
tune, honors — and take refuge in London, a sicklman, suflfering from
angina pectoris, not quite penniless, but with very small reserves. I went
to him at once, and found him broken, muddled, moving about in a
mental and moral vacuum.

I made a feeble attempt to comfort him, but the truth is that I could
scarcely look him in the eyes. I of course invited him to the house, and
he visited us repeatedly. He told me that Cambridge was prepared to
provide him with a laboratory, but he did not think he could really
settle down. The shock had been too great. He had occupied too high
a position in Germany ; his fall was therefore all the harder to bear.

It must have been particularly bitter for him to realize that his
baptism, and the baptism of his family, had not protected him. It was
difficult for me to speak to him ; I was ashamed for myself, ashamed for
this cruel world, which allowed such things to happen, and ashamed for
the error in which he had lived and worked throughout all his life; And
yet it was an error which was common enough ; there were many Jews
with his outlook — ^though not with his genius — ^who had regarded us
Zionists as dreamers or, worse, as kill-joys, or even as maniacs, who
were endangering the positions they had fought through to after many
years.

I began to talk to him then about coming out to us in Palestine, but
did not press the matter. I wanted him first to take a rest, recover from
his shock and treat his illness in a suitable climate.

He went south, and that summer (1933), following my hasty visit to
America, we met again in Switzerland. I was staying in Zermatt, at the
foot of the Matterhorn, and Haber was somewhere in the Rhone valley
and came over to see us. We dined together that evening. I fotmd him
a little improved, somewhat settled and past the shock. The surroundings
in the Rhone valley had had a beneficent effect on him.

During the dinner, at which my wife and my son Michael were also
present, Haber suddenly burst into an eloquent tirade. The reason was
the following: the eighteenth Zionist Congress was then being held in
Prague. I had refused to attend, not wishing to be involved in any
political struggle. During the dinner repeated calls came from Prague,
and frantic requests that I leave Zermatt at once and betake myself to

354

TRIAL AND ERROR

the Congress. I persisted in my refusal, and though I said nothing to
Haber about these frequent interruptions, except to mention that they
came from Prague, he guessed their purport from something he had
read in the papers, and he said to me, with the utmost earnestness :

‘‘Dr. Weizmann, I was one of the mightiest men in Germany. I was
more than a great army commander, more than a captain of industry. I
was the founder of industries ; my work was essential for the economic
and military expansion of Germany. All doors were open to me. But the
position which I occupied then, glamorous as it may have seemed, is as
nothing compared with yours. You are not creating out of plenty — ^you
are creating out of nothing, in a land which lacks everything; you are
trying to restore a derelict people to a sense of dignity. And you are, I
think, succeeding. At the end of my life I find myself a bankrupt. When
I am gone and forgotten your work will stand, a shining monument, in
the long history of our people. Do not ignore the call now ; go to Prague,
even at the risk that you will suffer grievous disappointment there.’^

I remember watching my young son, as he listened to Haber, who spoke
a halting English which his asthma made the more difficult to follow.
Michael was literally blue to the lips, so painfully was he affected, so
eager was he to have me take Haber’s advice, even though it meant my
leaving him in the middle of his holiday.

I did not go to Prague, much to Haber’s disappointment. But I made
use of the opportunity to press upon him our invitation to come out to
Palestine and work with us. I said : “The climate will be good for you.
You will find a modern laboratory, able assistants. You will work in
peace and honor. It will be a return home for you — ^your journey’s end.”

He accepted with enthusiasm, and asked only that he be allowed to
spend another month or two in a sanatorium. On this we agreed — and in
due course he set out for Palestine, was taken suddenly ill in Basle, and
died there. Willstatter came from Munich to bury him. Some ten years
later Willstatter too died in Switzerland, like Haber, an exile from
Germany.

These were two of the men whom I sought to attract to our institu-
tions in Palestine, both for their sake and for ours. There were others,
of course. I felt it would be a great accession of moral strength, and a
valuable source of technical knowledge if we could offer to the Hebrew
University, or to the Sieff Institute, Albert Einstein the physicist, James
Franck of Goettingen, the mathematician Hermann Weyl, the physicist
Placzek, the chemist Wiegener, to mention but a few names. But some-
how I failed to convince them. Some of them found homes in England,
at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, Birmingham; others, as we have
seen, in America. That was comprehensible ; but there were other places
chosen in preference to Palestine which were utterly beyond me.

Zurich was the center which dealt with academic refugees, and thither

SCIENTISTS — AND OTHERS

355

I went to consult the members of the Swiss committee. There I learned
early one morning that James Franck was in the city, a refugee — ^and
that he and his wife were breakfasting with my friend, Professor Rich-
ard Baer, the physicist. Without waiting for an invitation I barged in on
them and found the two gentlemen and Mrs. Franck immersed in a
discussion about the merits of going to — Turkey! Whether Franck was
considering the idea for himself, or whether he was recommending it to
others, I couldn't make out, but at that moment I entirely lost my good
manners. I could not contain myself, and exclaimed : ‘T can understand
it if you want to go to Oxford, Cambridge, New York or Chicago. But
if you go to Turkey, you will find the scientific conditions there much
worse than in Palestine — ^you might as well accept our invitation to go
to Palestine." Franck objected that there was no security of tenure in
Palestine, to which I promptly replied that tenure in Palestine would
be more secure than in most other countries — ^not excluding the Western
ones. “It is true," I said, “our University has not got government sup-
port, but if men like you came out, a great physics institute would be
built round you, and after a certain time you would not lack for any-
thing."

It was interesting to watch Mrs. Franck during this conversation.
She was a Swedish Jewess, very blonde, and obviously very proud of
her “Nordic" descent. She thought that I was trying to reduce her
husband to a condition too awful for words. She kept looking daggers at
me, and I had to give up the consultation. I felt then as I had felt in
the early days of Zionism. Just as the rich Jews never came to us until
we were a “practical" proposition, so these intellectually rich Jews
thought that Palestine would be detrimental to their careers. True, the
German catastrophe had greatly altered the situation, and Palestine was
absorbing more refugees than all other countries combined,* yet the
inertia, the weight of prejudice, was such that many of them preferred
Turkey to the Hebrew University in Palestine.

I had an opportunity of seeing some of the scientists who went to
Istanbul and Ankara when I visited those cities a few years later. They
were a sad lot, bewildered, lost, waiting for their contracts to expire,
and knowing that in most cases they would not be renewed. To each
scientist had been attached a few young Turkish students who were
supposed to learn from him the tricks of the trade, so as to replace him
at the end of a few years. In this policy, if it can so be called, the Turks
of course miscalculated. It is not enough to learn a few facts from a
professor in order to become a scientist. It is background that makes a
man a scientist, and that is not to be acquired in a few years; it is a
matter of tradition and of generations of endeavor. The Turks still had
to learn this elementary truth.

356 TRIAL AND ERROR

It was a truth I had borne in mind when the foundation stones of the
Hebrew University were laid. I knew it was not going to be easy to
create a model national university with human material which had to be
brought together from the various countries of the Dispersion. There is
an ancient saying of the Hebrew sages that to make a pair of tongs one
needs a pair of tongs. But we, at least, had had our institutions and
traditions. Something of the latter was rescued out of the general de-
struction in Europe, though when we contemplate our losses we are
overwhelmed by their extent. Not only millions of human beings were
done to death, but great institutions which were also living organisms.
Among the former, who knows how many Einsteins and Habers and
Willstatters there may have been; they perished with the center of
learning which would have helped to mold their gifts.

Our great men were always a product of symbiosis between the
ancient, traditional Talmudic learning in which our ancestors were
steeped in the Polish or Galician ghettos or even in Spain, and the
modern Western universities with which their children came in contact.
There is often as not a long list of Talmudic scholars and Rabbis in the
pedigrees of our modern scientists. In many cases they themselves have
come from Talmudic schools, breaking away in their twenties and
struggling through to Paris or Zurich or Princeton. It is this extraordi-
nary phenomenon — z. great tradition of learning fructified by modern
methods — ^which has given us both first-class scientists and competent
men in every branch of academic activity, out of all relation to our
numbers.

Now these great places of Jewish learning in Vilna, Warsaw, Kovno,
Breslau, Vienna, Pressburg, have been wiped off the face of the earth;
the great Jewish archives have been plundered or destroyed, and we
have to reconstruct them fragmentarily page by page. We have suffered
not only physically ; we have been murdered intellectually, and the world
scarcely realizes the extent of our affliction. It sounds like a cruel irony
when British or American statesmen reproach the remnants of Jewry
when they wish to leave the graves in Germany and Austria and
Holland and move to Palestine, where they hope to build a new life
under more stable conditions. For whatever the aberrations of a few at
the top, that is the longing of the great majority of the survivors.

Among the most gifted of the younger scientists who were expelled
from their posts with the advent of Hitler was Dr. David Bergmann. '
He had been the soul of the first university chemical laboratory in
Berlin, had had many collaborators, and promised to become one of
Germany's leading scientists. I had never met him personally, but I
knew of his work. One morning in the spring of 1933 I received a
telegram from a friend of mine still working at the Dahlem Institute,
telling me that Bergmann had been thrown out. Almost by return of

SCIENTISTS — AND OTHERS

357

post, and without having any real budget for it, I invited Bergmann and
his wife, who was also a chemist, to come over to London and join me.
It will always be a deep source of satisfaction to me that I did not
hesitate, or wait to obtain a budget, but just took the plunge and
brought over this man, who was destined to play such an important part
in my life as one of my nearest and most devoted friends, and in the
scientific and technical development of Palestine. I did not learn till
later that Bergmann was a Zionist, and that he was the son of a Rabbi,
that he had received a sound Jewish education, was a Hebrew scholar
and a great intellect, and that he lived and worked for Palestine and for
Palestine only.

It did not take him long to establish himself on my premises in
Holborn. I took another floor in the somewhat ancient house and rigged
up a sort of laboratory for him, and there he proceeded to work — ^for
something like eighteen hours a day. He entered with the utmost en-
thusiasm into my plans for the Sieff Institute. I remember a conver-
sation I had in Paris not long after, with Willstatter and Haber, with
Bergmann present. He developed before them his plans for work in the
institute which was then nearing completion. The two eminent scientists
listened very attentively, and then Willstatter asked me ironically: ‘‘How
many floors has the Daniel SieflE Institute?' To which I replied, “As
far as I know it will have two floors." “Well," said Willstatter, “you
had better build a skyscraper if you wish to carry out the program
Bergmann has outlined to us."

I happened to be in Palestine when the first stream of German
immigrants came in. Here they were, these German Jews, used to a
regular and sheltered life, mostly in solid businesses or professional
pursuits, altogether unfamiliar with social earthquakes of this kind,
which were more or less commonplaces to East European Jewry. They
lacked, therefore, the flexibility and adaptability of Russian and Polish
Jews; they were more rigid in their customs and habits; they took their
tragedy — which in 1932-1933 still resembled the old Russian expulsions,
and had not yet reached the bestiality of the extermination chambers —
more desperately to heart.

I saw them also in Germany as the shadows were closing on them,
and remember with particular vividness an evening late in December
1932, when I went from Willstatter’s house to that of my old friend Eli
Strauss. Strauss was a Zionist more or less of my generation, the head
of the Munich Jewish community, a distinguished and upright man.
He was very sick, suffering from cancer of the throat, without, of
course, knowing it. He insisted on getting up, receiving me more or less
in state, and offering me a meal. All my attempts to dissuade him from
undergoing this strain were futile. Not only did we sit out this meal,
during which I watched him with great anxiety trying to swallow his

358 TRIAL AND ERROR

food, but in spite of the pain he insisted on talking about the threat
hanging over German Jewry and the world at large.

After dinner there arrived a few leading members of the community,
and I have seldom lived through such a sad evening. Our host was
obviously a dying man, and his condition seemed symbolic of German
Jewry generally and of the Munich community in particular. They be-
sieged me with questions. What did I think of the situation? Was it
going to be really as bad as they were inclined to think at the moment ?
Would England try to stretch out a protecting hand over the persecuted?
I had no comfort for them. Already the signs of what was later to be
called appeasement were in the air. It was heartrending to see these men
— all of whom had built up fine lives, who had taken part in German
public affairs, and contributed to the greatness of their country — ^feeling
that the storm was about to break upon them, and at a loss where to
turn for comfort and succor. When I parted from these people, I knew
I was seeing Eli Strauss for the last time, and that I would never again
see a Jewish community in Munich. The tears stood in their eyes as they
watched me leave, and all I was able to utter at that moment was, ''May
God protect you.’'

These were the people who began to stream into Palestine in 1933
and 1934- I knew them, and I had a profound respect for the role which
all of them had played in the life of their country, and some of them had
played in the Zionist movement. But I was somewhat estranged from
them by their social rigidity, so different from the life and surroundings
in which I had grown up. I came into a Seder ceremony in Haifa, at-
tended by newly arrived German immigrants. They sang the Hagaddah,
but though the tune was rather a gay one, it sounded like a dirge, and
I could see, written large on the faces of these people, the memory of
their homes. These were people, who only a little while before had felt
secure ; they had represented a great moral, social and intellectual force.
Now they were uprooted, brought into a country with which few of them
had had any physical connection, compelled to build up a new life — some
of them at an advanced age — in a climate unsuitable for many of them,
in a place lacking the amenities to which they were accustomed. Watch-
ing these people one asked oneself : Will they succeed? Will they be able
to push new roots into the hard soil of Palestine ? Or will they end their
lives here in a sort of exile, forever bewailing the past and unable to
reconcile themselves to the present?

Remembering that scene, which is ever present in my mind, I think
with pride and deep satisfaction of the transformation through which
the German Jews have passed in Palestine, and of the distinguished
contribution which they have made to the orderliness, discipline, effi-
ciency, and general quality of our work. They exercised a great educa-

SCIENTISTS — AND OTHERS

359

tional influence on the East European Jews who still form a majority,
and who were inclined to look down upon the newcomers, though pre-
pared to give them all the assistance in their power. I could not help
thinking of the streams of Russian Jews who used to pass through the
German ports of Hamburg and Liibeck on their way to America, in my
student days toward the close of the last century; I remembered how
they used to be kindly — and patronizingly — received by the committees
of German Jewry, guided from the frontier to the ports and given a
send-off on the Hamburg-Amerika line. I used to come very often to
the central station in Berlin, to see the emigrants and exchange a few
words with them in their own language. I did not think then that a
similar fate would befall the solid and powerful German Jewry, that
they in their turn would be driven from their homes. There was, how-
ever, one profound difference between those East European emigrants
and these of the nineteen thirties: the latter were coming home! True,
their home was still alien to them, but their children adapted themselves
swiftly — and the parents followed suit not long after.

It was not easy at first. We faced difficulties of a new character, for
this was not a chdutz immigration whose nature was familiar to us and
to which we could apply known and tested methods. It was a middle-
class immigration, not all young people and not all adaptable to hard
physical work. We founded for them special types of suburban settle-
ments, in which the family could devote itself to the lighter kind of
agricultural work, while the head of the family was within easy dis-
tance of the city. Between the garden plot and the occupation, such as it
was, of the head of the family, a livelihood could be eked out, and in
time the system worked itself in and yielded good results.

There was a transitional period when we were disquieted by the
great increase of the urban population, particularly in Haifa and Tel
Aviv, due to the advent of the German immigrants. I had, as the reader
now knows, always been fearful of an undue urbanization of the Yishuv.
The tendency was always there ; land settlement is by its nature slower
and more difficult, and the acquisition of land in Palestine is fraught
with its own problems. It was therefore natural that the drift to the
towns should have been accentuated by the stream of German immi-
grants. We sought to arrest it by the halfway system I have described,
and our success was due to the adaptability of the younger generation,
which in this as in other respects led the way. The new types of settle-
ment like Ramath Ha-Shavim, and Kiryat Bialik and Nahariah, created
in those years, have taken firm root. They are till this day, as they were
at the beginning, composed almost entirely of German Jews; they stand
as model communities, reflecting great credit both on the founders and
on the country.

36 o trial and error

Thus my four years out of office were filled with laboratory work in
London and Rehovoth, fund raising, visits to America, South Africa
and other countries, the founding and launching of the Sieff Institute
in Rehovoth, the resettlement of German refugees, and other duties.
They were full years, but not happy ones, for the world was darkening
toward the eclipse of the Second World War.

CHAPTER 33

Return to Office

The International World Darkens — The Abyssinian War, a
Prelude — Zionist Illusions — Pinchas Rutenherg and His Great
Plan — Premature Emphasis on Private Initiative in Palestine
— The Unwritten Covenant with the Workers — Chalutzim,
Past and Present — The Moral Ballast oj the Movement,

In 193s I returned to office as President of the World Zionist Organ-
ization and of the Jewish Agency. I did it reluctantly, and after long
and earnest pleading on the part of my friends, particularly of the labor
movement. I had got into the stride of my scientific work again, spend-
ing more and more time in the laboratory in the new Institute, among
my colleagues. For several months in the latter part of 1934 and the
beginning of 1935 my wife and I had lived in a little bungalow in Reho-
voth, which we had rented from the poetess, Jessie Sampter. And
we had begun to plan our own home, which was completed in 1937
and where we finally settled down. I used to go every morning to the
laboratories of the Sieff Institute, working myself and following the work
of my colleagues. Every week I attended the meeting of the Zionist
Executive in Jerusalem. I went about the country a good bit, but in
general I tried to lead a regular life, or at least one not as fragmentated
as I had led in years past. I believe that my activities were not without
value for the National Home.

Yet this was not the fundamental reason for my reluctance. It was
rather that I did not see a genuine change of heart in the movement, or,
let me say, of the majority which had ejected me in 1931. They were
asking for me because a certain number of Zionists were now of the
opinion that they had nobody who could do much better! Sokolow,
though respected by the British as a man of learning and dignity, had
not got very far with them. Curiously enough, those of the general Zionists
who had been my strongest opponents in 1931, namely, the Americans,
were now among the most vigorous proponents of my return, I could
not help thinking that very soon after taking office I would be faced
with the same old troubles. I would again be made the scapegoat for the
sins of the British Government. Indeed, I anticipated a harder time than
before 1931, for circumstances were becoming more and more unfavor-

361

302 TRIAL AND ERROR

able. After a long threatening, the Abyssinian war finally broke out in
the summer of 1935. I said to the Congress: “The Mediterranean is
becoming stormy, and we occupy on its shores one of the key positions.^'
I regarded the Abyssinian war and the Spanish Civil War as the curtain
raisers of a much greater struggle. Both Mussolini and Hitler were
arming at a great pace, while the democracies showed both weakness
and lack of foresight. It was not to be expected that our path would be
made easier.

The reactionary spirit which was rapidly spreading over the whole
world was affecting the Zionist movement too, and this had been evident
even in 1931. The change was unhappily fostered by the illusory promises
of quick results which were held out by certain prominent people in the
movement — promises which played upon the natural impatience of our
workers to get on with the job, and led to counsels of despair. It was
made to appear that the gap between the desirable and the possible was
very easy to bridge, a doctrine which I have always opposed. The en-
couragement of this error went back to the time of the so-called Brandeis
struggle, and it always had, in the strangest way, the support, or promised
support, of men who were not Zionists at all. And always, perhaps not
so strangely, it was associated with an attitude of hostility to our most
characteristic creation in Palestine, the communal colonies, the co-
operatives, and the labor movement generally.

The history of the later years of Pinchas Rutenberg provides an apt
illustration.

Here was a man whose role in Palestinian life as a great builder was
outstanding, whose devotion and savoir jaire were beyond question. Had
he confined his activities to his engineering work, he would have achieved
even more in his own field. Unfortunately, like a great many people in
Palestine, he had political ambitions, and he did not realize that he was
by nature and temperament utterly unfit to stand at the head of a complex
political organization. He combined, in political matters, a childish naivete
with a colossal self-confidence, and he always dreamed of raising vast
sums of money — say of the order of fifty million dollars, which was in
fact a vast sum in Zionist work twelve or fifteen years ago — so as to build
up a huge land reserve and proceed with colonization on a massive scale.

He did not realize that the privately owned land organization which he
projected would have to sell its land to the highest bidder and that, if
the enterprise were at all attractive financially, large tracts would pass
into the hands of speculators. I was astonished and shocked when I
received his first annual report of the activities of the Palestine Electric
Corporation, of which he was the manager. It was divided into two
parts. The first was devoted to the proper business of the corporation.
The second contained an attack on the national funds of the Zionist
Organization, and the outline of a plan whereby the building of the

RETURN TO OFFICE 363

Jewish National Home was to be taken over by the Board of Directors of
the Palestine Electric Corporation !

A long and unhappy controversy ensued, and again I found myself
fighting against men — Rutenberg was one of them — for whom I had both
respect and admiration, but whose views on the development of Palestine
did violence to my conception of the organic character of Zionism. What-
ever form the controversy took, I vras always in opposition to the ‘^quick
and easy’' way. Today this aspect of the controversy has lost some of its
edge ; there are at present several investment companies in Palestine which
work successfully. They are, I repeat, due to the groundwork done by
the National Funds, and done under conditions rendered unnecessarily
difficult by the very advocates of private initiative. It was not easy, in
America, to explain the basic problem to donors who would have pre-
ferred to give their money to those who promised them returns, rather
than to a '^philanthropic” organization of which it was freely said that
it was incapable of handling finances. Those that spread such rumors,
perhaps quite honestly, did not seem to understand that they were under-
mining their own position. It was my task during my many journeys in
America, during my pilgrimages from city to city — some were quite small
ones — ^to counteract these nefarious influences, and to build up, painfully
and systematically, good will for a Palestine which was not showing
financial returns at the time, but which was increasing its ' absorptive
capacity for those who wished to go and settle there. It was a remarkable
fact, which testified to a sound instinct and real patriotism, that just the
poor elements responded to such treatment and gave liberally of their
substance. It was the richer people who were keen on investment.

Here was the fundamental difference between the two views of Zionism,
the views put forward long ago by Greenberg and Marmorek and Nordau,
and later by Jabotinsky and the Revisionists, and those held by our group.
That impatience, that lack of faith, was constantly pulling the movement
toward the abyss ; and between the abyss and the acual work in Palestine
stood the phalanx of the workers, to whom — though I never identified
myself with them — I considered myself attached. Gradually an unwritten
covenant was created between the small group of my friends in the so-
called general Zionist movement and the great mass of workers in the
settlements and factories of Palestine which formed the core of the
Zionist movement. This was the guarantee of our political sanity, of
our sense of realism and of our freedom alike from Revisionist delusions
and methods of violence.

There was something more than a personal bond between me and the
labor leaders and the rank and file, the men of Nahalal, Ain Harod and
the Emek generally. There was a partnership in effort and in suffering,
and but for them I do not think I could have endured the nervous and
physical grind of my fund-collecting tours of America and other countries.

364 TRIAL AND ERROR

I always bore in mind that the money would go toward redeeming the
Emek, the Jordan Valley and other waste places: and sometimes, when
I remembered the workers as I had last seen them, in Nahalal, their
eyes glittering with the hunger of weeks and months, greeting me cheer-
fully and hopefully— I felt I had a part, however small, in their suffering
and their achievement.

Much has been written about the efforts of our pioneers, and unfor-
tunately much has been forgotten; and there were many good Zionists
who, in the years I am now writing of, were under the impression that
the old pioneering days were over in Palestine, and that the great days
of the chalutsim were forever a thing of the past. Not only was this
untrue of 1935 ; it is not true in 1947-

One has only to go down these days to the Dead Sea, where the young
people who have come out of the Diaspora are leeching the salty earth
of Sodom and Gomorrah— earth which for thousands of years has borne
nothing but Dead Sea fruit— and with patient effort are bringing it to
life again, in order to know that the struggle still goes on. Or one may
visit the groups of young men and women who have settled in the Negev
desert, in the dangerous outpost positions between Gaza and the Egyptian
frontier, rebuilding a part of Palestine on which, with the exception of
a few thin strips which the Bedouins have sown with scanty barley, not
a blade of grass has grown for thousands of years. I have watched the
work for the last three years, and I always approach these settlements
with a feeling of awe ; and every time I go to bed I cannot help reflecting
on those small groups of young men and women — most of them members
of the Youth Aliyah, saved from Germany only a few years ago — ^in tire
middle of the desert, quite alone, working energetically, gaily, without
making a single complaint. For all I know they come from families as
good as and better than mine, and grew up in circumstances very different
from those they are placed in now. But they have gone through a harden-
ing process, in which they witnessed the destruction of their near and
dear ones. I remember the inscription on one of the “illegal” ships which
sailed once into the harbor of Haifa— a streamer prepared for the benefit
of the British soldiers and sailors : Don’t shoot, we are not jrightened:
we made our acquaintance with death long ago.

Our workers are the moral ballast of the movement today, just as they
were in the early days of the Zionist movement, and as they were in the
years of which I am writing. It is only of late that a negative relation has
sprung up between a few of the urban labor leaders and my group. And
again, significantly enough, inevitably, I might say, it is a struggle
between those who proclaim that they know how to bring a million and
two million Jews into Palestine in three or four years, and those who
know the possibilities and accept them.

C H AFTER 3 4

Mediterranean Intrigue

The French Attitude toward Palestine — M. de Jouvenel, High
Commissioner of Syria — M. Herriofs Astonishing Speech —
Italy and Palestine — Conversations with Mussolini — Count
Theodoli, Italian Representative on the Per7nanent Mandates
Commission — Turkey and Palestine — Visit to Turkey, ipjS,

Among the tasks which fell on the shoulders of the President of the
Zionist Organization was the maintenance of contacts with the various
governments of the Powers which were represented on the League of
Nations. Foremost among these were the French, who, besides being
England's immediate neighbors across the Channel, were also her Man-
datory neighbor in Syria on the northern border of Palestine; and the
Italians.

I was therefore frequently in Paris and in Rome — and each city pre-
sented its own problem to us.

In Paris I met, I believe, every Premier between the two wars, from
Poincare to Reynaud. Leon Blum had a long record of co-operation with
us. In the days when Nahum Sokolow was conducting our negotiations
on the Continent he was always kept informed semiofficially of the
French situation by M. Blum. In later years M. Blum came to take a
real interest in the movement, working closely with M. Marc Jarblum,
one of the leaders of the French Zionist (Organization. M. Aristide
Briand was also quite sympathetic, although a little vague as to what
was going on. Briand used to say: “Palestine must be a wonderful
country, and a very impressive one," and praise the oranges which he
used to receive from us every Christmas as the best he had ever eaten.
But his sentiments went no deeper than the skin of the oranges. He was
a warmhearted man of strong liberal sympathies, and was attracted by
the idea of the Jewish renaissance, but he knew little about the moral
force of the Zionist movement, and made no effort to find out more.

By far the largest majority of the officials of the Quai d'Orsay were
either indifferent or hostile; occasionally they were jealous of our prog-
ress. I have remarked already that the French followed the Arab lead in
regarding Palestine merely as the southern part of Syria, and when
Palestine was given a separate Mandate they felt they had a grievance.

365

366 TRIAL AND ERROR

The French, moreover, had always considered themselves the represen-
tatives of Europe in the eastern Mediterranean, and the protectors of
the Christians in those parts. English was practically unknown until after
Allenby^s time. It is too often forgotten in England that it was the Balfour
Declaration which brought her to Palestine, and gave her the raison
dfetre for being there. The French were inclined to look at the revival of
Jewish Palestine through Catholic eyes, and as an encroachment on the
French tradition.

An exception was M. de Saint Quentin, whose connection with the
Levant went back to the First V/orld War, when he was liaison officer
between the French Army and Allenby. He had encouraged me at the
time of my visit to Feisal ; and later he encouraged me to make several
visits to Syria, and to meet the French High Commissioners.

Among these the most interesting, in my opinion, was M. de Jouvenel,
who was opposite number to Field-Marshal Lord Plumer. M. de Jouvenel
had been the editor of le Matin, one of the most influential French
newspapers ; he was hostile to the Zionist idea and anything connected
with it, and we were never able to get a favorable line in his paper. When
I first met him he was not slow, either, in giving expression to his views.

This happened in Beyrouth, where I was presented to him by some
French friends. He made use of the occasion to unburden himself, and
I let him go on; then I said: ^‘Your Excellency really cannot speak of
Zionism and Palestine, never having studied the one or seen the
other. The latter is right on your Syrian frontier, and if you were to
visit it for only a couple of days, you might change your views.'"

He agreed, and came over shortly afterward to stay with the High
Commissioner of Palestine, where I met him again. A very queer contrast
he made, by the way, with Lord Plumer: the one a sophisticated and
gallant Frenchman, the other a staid and serious English aristocrat of
the Victorian era. He toured the country, and then I met him again a
third time, and the change which had come over his views reminded me a
little of the transformation which the first visit to Palestine had wrought
in Felix Warburg. M. de Jouvenel not only retracted his previous
criticisms ; he even reproached the Zionists for never having made any
attempt to come and work in Syria !

I was very much startled by his suggestion, and answered that we had
plenty to do in Palestine, where we were working under the terms of a
Mandate, without coming to Syria, where we had no standing and would
be regarded by the Arabs as intruders — ^the vanguard perhaps of Jewish
expansion over the entire Middle East. But de Jouvenel insisted that the
Jews were the only people who could develop Syria.

''Of course," he added, "I would not want you to work in southern
.Syria, because immediately after you’d come to Tyre and Saida you
would want the frontier rectified. But I have one great project, and that

MEDITERRANEAN INTRIGUE 367

is the development of the region of the Euphrates. It is of course many
hundreds of miles away from Palestine/’ and he produced a map on
the spot, and showed me where the Euphrates crosses great stretches
of desert country with a very thin population, mostly Bedouin. 'Thou-
sands of square miles,” he said, enthusiastically, "could be irrigated here
and nourish a great population.”

He went on to mention that French aviators who had flown over the
Euphrates basin had found traces of the ancient canals which had brought
water thence to the oasis of Palmyra, where a considerable civilization
had flourished in ancient times. "What has been done in ancient times,”
he said, "can certainly be done in modern,” and he grew eloquent on the
possibilities. But the only reply it provoked from me was : "You know,
M. de Jouvenel, we have our own water problem in Palestine, but we
shall have to be satisfied with the modest Jordan. Wonderful as the
picture is, we can’t be tempted by it.” He even pleaded on historic
grounds. "Dr. Weizmann, it is written in the Book of Nehemiah that
Tadmor, which as you know is Palmyra, was built by the Jews.”

He raised the subject again when we met later in Paris, and even
persuaded Leon Blum of the soundness of the idea. But it had no practical
value for us.

A very queer incident sticks in my mind in connection with my visits
to France and my efforts to influence public opinion in our favor. This
took place in 1933, when with Hitler’s ascent the tide of German refugees
was beginning to move toward Palestine.

I received one day a telegram from Mile. Louise Weiss, a French
journalist of distinction, who had wide contacts in political circles, invit-
ing me to deliver an address on Zionism and Palestine in the lecture
theater of the Sorbonne. She assured me that the meeting would be held
under the most distinguished auspices and would attract an important
audience. I hesitated for one reason only. I felt that it would be impossible
for me to avoid speaking on the events in Germany ; my feelings might
perhaps run away with me, and we had too many hostages in Hitler’s
hands. I would never forgive myself if I made their position even harder
than it was. On the other hand this was a unique opportunity to state
our case to an influential part of the French public. I weighed the pros
and cons, sought the advice of a few friends, and finally accepted.

The meeting was all that Mile. Weiss had promised. The lecture hall
was packed. The chairman was M. Martin, an ex-Minister of Finance,
and I was informed that there was present tout Paris. I recognized in the
audience some members of the British Embassy, friends from the Quai
d’Orsay, representatives of the Rothschild family, the son of Captain
Dre5dus, the Chief Rabbi of Paris, and others.

I tried to speak calmly of conditions in Germany and of the respon-
sibility which rested upon the civilized world toward the victims of

TRIAL AND ERROR

368

German policy. I spoke of the refuge which some of them were finding
in Palestine — it was more than a refuge : for the children it was, after a
few months, a homecoming. I had seen the German children mixing
with the Palestinian and becoming, in a short time, indistinguishable
from them. I then dealt with the country itself, which, in spite of its
smallness, seemed to be able to expand its capacity as the need presented
itself.

The audience followed my statement with intense interest, and when
I had ended I was somewhat astonished to hear the chairman say that I
ought to repeat the same lecture in the same place the following day.
There were, he was certain, numbers of people who would like to hear
it again, and a chance should also be given to those who had been unable
to obtain admittance the first evening. He stated further that he was
quite certain that M. Herriot would be glad to act as chairman for the
second evening. I could not but accept.

I spoke again, the next day, before a packed audience, but my chairman
was not M. Herriot. He failed to appear, so we went ahead without an
official chairman, Mile. Weiss opening the meeting. I was in the middle
of my address when M. Herriot suddenly irrupted into the hall. Without
paying the slightest attention to me — ^perhaps he did not even notice
me, for I had stopped speaking when he entered — he rushed on to the
platform and in a stentorian voice delivered himself of a twenty-minute
address on matters which had nothing to do with Zionism, Palestine or
the Jews: it was all about the greatness of French civilization, done in
magnificent style, but consisting of generalities. He finished as abruptly
as he had burst in. The audience was utterly nonplussed by this extraor-
dinary intermezzo, but Mile. Weiss calmly took the chair again, and asked
me to resume.

I never met M. Herriot again, and I am quite certain that he had not
the faintest notion what the meeting was all about.

Of the attitude of the Italian Government to the Zionist movement I
have already spoken in the chapter describing the struggle round the
ratification of the Mandate. Italy had been, prior to the advent of
fascism, entirely free from anti-Semitism, but a change began to appear
shortly after the accession of Mussolini. He himself violently denied any
anti-Semitic tendencies, but they were fostered by underlings like Staracci
and Federzoni, and the whole Fascist press was flavored with anti-
Semitism. From time to time articles appeared attacking Zionism and
the participation of Italian Jews in the movement. The Zionists, and the
Jews generally, though they did not give loud expression to their views
on the subject, were known to be anti-Fascist. Enzo Sereni, a member
of a very distinguished family— -later one of the founders of the co-
operative colony Givat Brenner — ^was marked by the Italian police. A
brother of his, a known Communist, was arrested and condemned to the

MEDITERRANEAN INTRIGUE 369

Lipari Islands. He could have obtained his release by recanting. His
father, who was the King’s physician, pleaded with him to do so. He
refused. Later he escaped from the Lipari Islands and made his way to
Moscow. Other Jews were caught smuggling anti-Fascist literature
from France into Italy, and the position of the community became a
difficult one.

All these circumstances made my visits to Rome matters of some im-
portance to the Italian Jews. They felt that my talks with the head of the
government, my explanations of the aims of the Zionist movement, would
help ease the situation for them.

I had three conversations with Mussolini, spaced over a number of
years. My first took place shortly after the First World War, and he
received me in his famous office — a long room, dimly lighted and almost
empty of furniture. He sat at a small desk at the furthest corner from the
door, so that the visitor had to walk quite a distance to meet him. Before
the table stood a hard chair, for the visitor. It was all somewhat theatrical,
and in no way contributed — ^was perhaps not intended to contribute — ^to
putting the visitor at his ease.

However, he greeted me affably enough, shook hands with me, and
after the usual exchange of politenesses led off with the remark, in
French : '"You know. Dr. Weizmann, not all Jews are Zionists.” To which
I replied, '^Of course, I know it only too well, and not all Italians are
Fascisti.” He smiled wryly, and did not take it too badly. At any rate,
the conversation became very normal and there was no attempt to brow-
beat or intimidate me. I told him about our plans and intentions, and he
was interested in finding out whether much of our immigration went
through Italian ports. I explained that Trieste was very important for us
and that we had extremely friendly relations with the Lloyd Triestino.
We were also using Genoa, Venice, and Naples; and we were anxious
to cultivate the good will of the Italian people.

Mussolini then spoke of England and insinuated that we Zionists were
merely a pawn in Great Britain’s power game. I said that I had never
seen any particularly sinister intentions behind Britain’s Zionist policy ;
so far England was the only great country that had shown readiness to
help us begin actual operations in Palestine. What ulterior motives there
may have been in the minds of certain British statesmen I could not
know; but as long as these operations were possible, and we could
carry on without too many difficulties, we should maintain our relations
with England, which I considered essential. He said, suddenly: ^‘You
know, we could build your state en toute piece” To which I replied:
'T remember that the Romans destroyed it en toute piece”

He was not particularly pleased with this answer. He probably had
expected me to say what I thought the Italian Government could do for
us, but I was not going to walk into that trap. He went on to ask whether

370 TRIAL AND ERROR

the Italian language was being taught or spoken in our schools, and I had
to answer in the negative. However, I added, there would certainly be a
chair of Italian language and literature at the Hebrew university. The
Jews had always admired the Italian spirit of freedom and tolerance, and
as the Premier knew, many Jews had distinguished themselves in the
service of Italy. There might be some disagreement in certain sections of
young Jewry on the subject of fascism, but this should not be construed
as unfriendliness toward Italy. We greatly admired the Italian civilization.

I felt I was skating on thin ice and wanted to end the conversation as
soon as I had spoken my piece on Jews and fascism and Italy, but he
kept me for some time, asking me about our various undertakings in
Palestine, which were then in the embryonic stage. He was obviously
keen that the port of Haifa, which was already being talked about, should
be built by Italian firms. He hinted at Jews who were leaders in this
field, and I knew that he meant the firm of Alma j a. I said I would be
glad to know more about them.

I carried away the impression that Mussolini was not hostile to the
Zionist idea, or to our work in Palestine ; his suspicion and hostility were
directed at the British, who in his opinion were using the Jews in the
eastern Mediterranean in order to cut across the Italian control of Mare
Nostrum.

I became acquainted with the Alma j as, a very distinguished old family
which still maintained the Jewish tradition, and they mentioned their
interest in the port of Haifa. I had to answer truthfully that we would not
have much to say in this matter, and that there were great British firms
of ship and port builders, like Armstrong Whitworth. It might be well
for the Alma] as to get in touch with them.

As fascism became more strongly established in Italy it fell more
deeply under the influence of German anti-Serriitism, and the attacks in
the Fascist press increased in number and violence. Mussolini was still
hesitating between linking up with the Western Powers and throwing in
his lot with Germany. His price — ^from whichever side he might obtain
it — ^was expansion in Africa, and gains in Europe — Savoy, Nice, Corsica.
There was hesitation and uncertainty of direction in the Fascist camp.
The Germans, as always, were extremely active in Italy. It was not that
they considered Italy a particularly valuable ally; they were more con-
cerned with a springboard for action in the Mediterranean, directed
against Britain.

We were an insignificant factor in this struggle of the Great Powers;
still, there we were, growing, pushing our roots into an important part
of the Mediterranean shore, and the Italians did not like it. Their
attitude found more than journalistic expression in the Permanent
Mandates Commission, where the Italian representative, Count Theodoli,

MEDITERRANEAN INTRIGUE 371

could always be relied on to veto any constructive suggestion in our
behalf.

What Count Theodoli’s personal convictions on the subject of Zionism
were, I do not know ; but he did have a personal relation to it. He was
connected with a great Arab family in Beyrouth, the Sursuks, who were
the absentee landlords from whom we had bought large stretches of
land in the Valley of Jezreel. Neither Theodoli nor his relatives the
Sursuks could get over the fact that they had sold the land so cheaply —
actually they got a very high price for areas which our work made
valuable later — ^and they always threw the blame on Victor Sursuk, a
member of the family who kept a great establishment in Alexandria, and
whom they accused of Zionist leanings. They should have held on to
the land, and they would have got for it five times as much as they did.
In vain did I explain to Theodoli and his Arab relatives that what they
had sold us was a deadly marsh, and they better than anyone else should
have known how the Arab villages in that district had disappeared, and
how we had had to sink hundreds of thousands of pounds into drainage
and improvement and roads. If the land was so valuable now, it had
become so through our work and effort, our sacrifices in blood and
money. This, incidentally, is a phenomenon we are constantly running up
against in Palestine. Visitors who know nothing about the country and
its history are always making the unfounded charge that the Jews have
taken the best land. Actually we took the worst, and made it the best
by our efforts. It seems as if God has covered the soil of Palestine with
rocks and marshes and sand, so that its real beauty can only be brought
out by those who love it and will devote their lives to healing its wounds.

On the Permanent Mandates Commission Count Theodoli, following
instructions, posed as the great defender of Arab rights and of the
Catholic Church against the imaginary encroachments of the Jews. The
Italians were worried by the excessive liberalism of the new Jewish
institutions, and helped spread the legend of the flagrant atheism of the
Jewish settlements in the Holy Land. This was a time when the Fascists
were entering into close relations with the Vatican, and making what
political capital they could of the combination.

I paid a second visit to Italy to see Mussolini and to tour the Italian-
Jewish communities. The Rome-Berlin Axis had not yet been forged, the
issue of Italy's alliance was still in doubt, and I hoped to make some
improvement in our relations with the Italians. I believe my second talk
with Mussolini was not without value. He said he had been delighted
to learn that the Zionists in Jerusalem were on excellent terms with the
local Italians ; also that our colonies were making good progress. After
this second interview a better tone toward us could be observed in the
Italian press; the substance of the interview got out, and its friendly
character contributed a great deal toward improving the position of the

37^ TRIAL AND ERROR

Jewish commtmity. I have a particularly vivid recollection of the second
interview with Mussolini because it took place on the eve of Yom Kip pur.

My third and last interview with Mussolini still fell within the period
of Italian indecision; it was the longest of the interviews and the most
substantial in content. Count Theodoli arranged it, and on this occasion
he showed himself full of good will and friendliness — a Saul changed into
a Paul. Mussolini too was extremely affable, and talked freely of a Rome-
Paris-London combination, which, he said, was the logical one for Italy.
He spoke also of the chemical industry, and of the Italian need of
pharmaceuticals, which we could produce in Palestine. He regretted that
his gestures toward London and Paris had not met with the proper
response.

I repeated the substance of this conversation to my British friends in
London, but it had no consequences. Shortly before the outbreak of the
war Halifax and Chamberlain visited Mussolini and tried to win him
over but by then it was too late. He was hopelessly in the clutch of the
^Germans, whom he strongly disliked, always Speaking with contempt of
their manners and their overbearing character! The contempt was, of
course, quite mutual. I do not know whether detaching Rome from Berlin
would have prevented the outbreak of the war, but it certainly might have
made a great difference to the war in the Mediterranean, might have
saved many lives and shortened the agony by many months.

It was not without a certain discomfort that I used to make my views
known to British officials. The British Jews were in an awkward
predicament. Their hostility to Germany, their manifest unhappiness at
seeing British statesmen on friendly terms with our bitterest persecutors,
could give the impression that they wanted the British to fight our war
for us ; the fact that what they sought was consonant with England’s
interests was thereby obscured.

There was another instance of this kind which occurred much later, in
fact only a year before the outbreak of the Second World War. Relations
between the Jews and Arabs in Palestine were very strained — ^this was
the time of the Arab terror — and I was advised by many friends to see
whether I could not persuade the Turkish Government to use its good
offices as intermediary between us and the Arabs.

It struck me as a sound idea. It should be borne in mind that although
Kemal Attaturk had secularized the Government, Turkey was still
viewed by the Arab world as a major Moslem community. Its pro-
gressive record, its position as a bridge between Europe and Asia, its
standing with the Western world, all helped to enhance its prestige in the
eyes of the Arabs. There was no doubt that the good will of the Turks
could go a long way in improving relations between us and the Arabs,
more so as the Turks had begun to take an interest in our work. We
had put up a pavilion at a Turkish Exhibition in Smyrna, with samples

MEDITERRANEAN INTRIGUE

373

of Palestinian industrial and agricultural products, and the usual statis-
tical tables on education, hygiene, and so on. These had made a profound
impression on visitors, and Kemal Attaturk had sent a number of
Government representatives to Palestine to see whether our methods
could not be applied to the revival of Turkey. We knew, of course, that
the Turks would be very careful not to offend the susceptibilities of the
Arabs ; also that there was much bitterness in Turkey over the fact that
the liberated Arabs had taken possession of vast tracts of the former
Turkish Empire and were doing nothing to develop them. It would
therefore not be plain sailing to get the Turks to act as intermediaries
for us ; but it was certainly worth trying.

There was another purpose in my visit to Turkey in 1938. One already
felt the approach of the war. Germany was doing everything in her power
to attach Turkey to the Axis, and anything that might be done to counter-
act this influence was of value. Although my main interest was Zionist,
I kept the British Government informed of my conversations with
Turkish officials and of the views I gained in regard to general
matters.

My wife and I arrived in Istanbul on November 27, 1938. Istanbul
made on us the impression of a city almost devoid of life and movement —
a vast agglomeration of houses and abandoned palaces, exquisitely
beautiful in certain parts, but in a dying condition. The shops of Istanbul
were full of German rubbish, evidence of the inroads which German
trade had made on the Turkish market.

Ankara made a very different impression. Situated in the interior of
Asia Minor, amid picturesque surroundings, in the heart of the agri-
cultural country, it was new, healthy and alive, corresponding to the new
spirit of the Turkish people. Very impressive, too, were the '‘Gates of
Tamerlane,” a great fissure in the rocks dominating Ankara, through
which the Tartars are said to have irrupted into Asia Minor on their
way to Europe.

We spent a few days in the two main cities and I had numerous
conversations with Turkish officials, chief among them Jellal Bayard, the
Prime Minister, and Ismet Inonu, then Finance Minister. I found, as
I had expected, a considerable interest in Palestine, but what permanent
results the conversations might have had for us it would be difficult to say.
The war intervened shortly after. But the secondary aspect of my visit
may still be of interest.

The Turkish officials approached me from a single point of view : they
wanted to know whether the Jews could help them to obtain a gold loan.
Of course I could not hold out any promises. I had, before leaving
London, consulted several banker friends (this after a couple of visits
to the Turkish Embassy) and all I could suggest was that the Turkish
Government invite out a committee qualified to discuss such matters. The

374

TRIAL AND ERROR

prqposal, practical as it seemed to me, did not appeal to the Turkish
authorities, who were probably under the naive impression that I was in
control of vast fortunes, and w’-as merely putting them off.

I discussed the matter with the British Ambassador, Sir Percy
Lorraine, who told me that what the Turks needed was about half a
million gold pounds per annum to see them through their immediate
difficulties. Astonished at the smallness of the sum, I ventured to suggest
that the British might, usefully and without much risk, negotiate such
a loan for the Turks, and that it might go a long way to neutralize
German influence. My suggestion found no echo, and again I had the
feeling that I was suspected of looking at matters entirely from the
Jewish point of view ; I was not being as careful as British officialdom in
taking the feelings of the Germans into account ! I do not assert that one
could have bought a Turkish alliance with the sum proposed; but I
imagine that a gesture of good will on the part of Great Britain would
have been of value. In any case, Turkish neutrality during the war cost
the Allies a great deal more than the half-million pounds per annum
asked.

It was during this visit that I came in contact with the German Jewish
scientists who had accepted positions at the universities of Istanbul and
Ankara. They were an unhappy lot. They did not complain of any
derogatory treatment, but most of them were faced again by the problem
they thought they had solved five years before: refuge. Their contracts
were expiring, and there was no prospect of renewal.

CHAPTER 35

The Permanent Mandates Commission

Function of the Commission — Professor William Rappard of
Switzerland — M, Orts of Belgium — Lord Lugard of England
— Attitude of the Colonial Office,

A MONG the many activities which took me periodically out of
England was the maintenance of contacts with the Permanent Mandates
Commission of the League of Nations. Although we had an office in
Geneva to take care of matters in a routine way, there were the special
occasions when the members of the Permanent Mandates Commission
came together to receive reports and pass on them. Except for Professor
Rappard none of them lived in Switzerland. They therefore had to be
kept informed by special and individual contacts between sessions.

Whether the views and criticisms of the Mandates Commission carried
much weight with the Mandatory* Power is doubtful ; but the cumulative
effect of those annual reports was not without importance, both for the
record and for its effect on public opinion. It was our business to present
our case in the best possible way, to bring out the facts in exact and
proper form, and to see to it that the reports should not be limited merely
to criticism of administrative details, but should give a general picture of
our work and the growth of the National Home in the face of the
difficulties we encountered.

We were not entitled to appear at the sessions of the Mandates Com-
mission, nor did I consider it dignified or proper to come to Geneva
during such sessions and lobby in the antechambers. The members of the
commission were very much overworked at those periods, and had as
much as they could do to study the reports. To approach them then would
have been an imposition, the more so as the Arabs and other interested
parties would have followed suit, and an impossible situation would have
ensued. It was therefore necessary to see the various members of the
Mandates Commission in their respective countries.

On the whole this very distinguished body, which had a unique task
to perform, was impartial, honest, and industrious in its attempts to get
at the truth. Occasionally it was overimpressed by the might of the
Mandatory Power, but on the whole we were given a good chance to

375

376 TRIAL AND ERROR

present our case, and in the course of the years some of the members
became thoroughly acquainted with the details of our work in Palestine
and with the various aspects of our movement. I am anxious to make
it clear that I have never found any bias in any of the members, excepting
Count Theodoli of Italy. We had some well-wishers in the commission,
but their friendliness did not blind them in the performance of their
duties or incline them to view the facts otherwise than with absolute
objectivity.

Foremost among the members of the commission was Professor
William Rappard, of the University of Geneva. He was well acquainted
with the Anglo-Saxon mentality, had lived for many years in America
and had been, I believe, one of Woodrow Wilson’s favorite secretaries.
He was a man of the greatest intellectual capacity, with a deep under-
standing of the Jewish problem in all its bearings and as deep a sympathy
with our hopes and endeavors.

Professor Rappard was a helpful guide to us, and to me in particular,
in the inner workings of the League, an intricate labyrinth leading to
many dark domains in European and world politics. It is a source of
pleasure, and of not a little pride, to recall that our acquaintance, which
was purely formal and official at first, crystallized into a lifelong friend-
ship. Whenever M. Rappard came over to England, which happened
once or twice every year, we always met if I happened to be in the coun-
try, as we did if I happened to be passing through Switzerland when
he was there. It was always a delight to converse with this sage and
experienced man, in whom I found a peculiar and impressive blend of
the intellectuality of the scholar and statesman with the simplicity and
solidity of the Swiss peasant.

Another member of the commission who was a commanding personal-
ity was the Belgian M. Orts, a man of great administrative experience,
who had occupied a high position in the Congo. Interestingly enough, this
experience had taught him that there is a world of difference between
the black Congo and white Palestine, and he understood the incongruity
of British attempts to apply the methods of the first to the problems of
the second— attempts which, among a sensitive and sophisticated popu-
lation, often turned the machinery of administration into a sort of
Procrustean bed. M. Orts fought against that, sometimes quite effectively.
In him too we found a sympathetic and critical appreciation of our
efforts, and a deep understanding of the bearing of the Jewish problem
on the National Home. He saw the latter not simply as a place of
refuge for immigrants, but as a center of civilization built by a modern
people drawing on an ancient tradition in a land hallowed by memories
and associations. I used to visit M. Orts once or twice a year in Brussels
and spend a long evening with him in his study, sometimes explaining

THE PERMANENT MANDATES COMMISSION 377

our position to him, sometimes sitting at his feet and learning from his
wide experience as a great administrator, statesman, and man of the
world.

A third leading member of the Mandates Commission was Lord
Lugard, the British representative; again a personality of great power,
commanding the respect and affection of those whose privilege it was to
come in touch with him. One of the most remarkable features in my
relations with Lord Lugard was his complete impartiality in dealing
with a matter closely affecting the interests of Great Britain. He had
been a lifelong servant of British imperial interests, and, like M. Orts,
the administrator of a large African dependency. He had been one of the
first to try to associate the native population with the administration, and
he had made an enviable name for himself throughout the black continent.
He was humane in his outlook, sympathizing with the submerged and
dispossessed, but at the same time strong in his views and severe in his
criticisms. In conversation he always made on me the impression of a
great judge called upon to try a complicated case. This manner of his
did not disturb me at all; his severe exterior was belied by a pair of
kindly and understanding eyes. He felt deeply with the Jewish plight, and
I always knew that he would put the Jewish case in the best possible
light, though he would not say a word about it to me.

It became almost a tradition for me to pay him regular visits at his
modest place in Little Parkhurst, near Dorking, in Surrey. Curiously
enough, his residence was very close to that of Claude Montefiore, one
of the spiritual leaders of English Jewry, but (as the reader may
remember from earlier chapters) an avowed and active anti-Zionist.
These two men were apparently on terms of close friendship ; I never met
Montefiore there, but from some hints dropped by Lord Lugard I
gathered that they had discussed the Jewish National Home more than
once.

It was always an intellectual and spiritual occasion to spend a few
hours with Lord Lugard, though it was not without its drawbacks. He
was advanced in years and hard of hearing, and I had to make a consider-
able physical effort to make him understand what I was saying. Now and
then I used to meet him in town, at his request, once or twice in the
offices of Barclays Bank, of which he was a director.

These three persons formed the core of the Mandates Commission,
and I could easily imagine a clash between them and the rather dry
functionaries who came before them to justify the actions of the Colonial
Office. These used to complain about the necessity of having to account
to a lot of foreigners for the administration of Palestine, asking somewhat
ironically what a foreigner could understand of British methods and
British mentality. They usually forgot that among the members of the
Mandates Commission there was Lord Lugard, an Englishman, and a

378 TRIAL AND ERROR

magnificent administrator, who understood their methods only too
thoroughly, and did not by any means always approve of them. For
that matter, the ways of the Colonial Office were not beyond the compre-
hension of men like Rappard and Orts, either.

CHAPTER 36

Riot and the Peel Commission

Appease^nent oj the Arabs — The Legislative Council — An
Undemocratic Proposal — Riots in Palestine, April, ips6 — The
Mufti to the Fore — The Administration Fumbles — Appoint-
ment oj the Peel Commission — I Give Evidence before It —
Partition Comes up — The Twentieth Zionist Congress — Violent
Controversy — The Jewish Position Misrepresented,

The beginnings of the strain which developed between us and Sir
Arthur Wauchope were to be found in his advocacy of a legislative
council, to which he was committed by the Government, but which he
himself also favored. This difficulty, by itself, might have been overcome,
for Sir Arthur's sympathies with the National Home were, as I have
said, profound and informed.

From the time of his arrival in 1931 Sir Arthur had entered into the
problems of the country with great enthusiasm and had realized from the
outset that the mainspring of our progress was immigration. By 1935 the
annual immigration figure passed the sixty thousand mark, and we
thought that if this would only continue for another few years we would
be past the difficulties which had given us most trouble. Fate decreed
otherwise. We can see now that this period was an oasis in the desert
of time.

The Abyssinian war came in 1935, and with it the accentuation of
England's policy of appeasement toward the aggressive powers and their
possible satellites. Among the latter the Foreign Office placed the Arabs —
and here began the deterioration both of our position and of our relations
with Sir Arthur Wauchope.

Appeasement of the Arabs did not at first take the form of limitation
of Jewish immigration; that, in 1934, 193S, and part of 1936 was more
or less regulated by the absorptive capacity of the country. It took, in-
stead, a form which, if allowed to develop, would have led to the complete
arrest both of Jewish immigration and of Jewish progress generally:
namely, British advocacy of a legislative council with Arabs in the
majority.

The idea of a legislative council had been mooted as far back as 1922,

379

TRIAL AND ERROR

380

in the Churchill White Paper. It was raised again in the Passfield White
Paper of 1931. It was contained in the instructions with which Ramsay
MacDonald had sent Sir Arthur Wauchope to Palestine, and Sir Arthur
had always been favorably inclined to the idea. But he did not begin to
press it upon us until he himself was under strong pressure from the
Colonial Office. The proposal submitted to us was for a council consisting
of fourteen Arabs (nine elected, five appointed), seven Jews (three
elected, four appointed), two members of the commercial community of
unspecified race (appointed) and five British officials.

Discussions regarding a legislative council had, then, been going on
for years. During my out-of-office period Sir Arthur had frequently
consulted me on the subject, and I had pointed out that to talk of elected
Arabs representing their people was to contradict the democratic prin-
ciple which it was supposed to further. A legislative council in Palestine
would be merely a modernized cloak for the old feudal system, that is, a
continuation in power of the family cliques which had held the country
in their thrall for centuries and ground down the faces of the poor.

I pointed out what was equally obvious, that official election to power
would enable the Husseinis, the Mufti and their group to terrorize the
villages even more effectively than before. Sir Arthur may or may not
have agreed with me ; he pressed his line with increasing insistence from
the winter of 1935 on.

It was true that the proposed council would be so constructed that the
number of Arabs would be balanced by the combination of Jews, British
officials and unspecified members ; and it was also true that the granting
of certificates of immigration would be reserved to the High Commis-
sioner. But as to the first point, we had had experience enough with the
British officials in Palestine to know that we could not rely on them to
defend the principles of the Mandate; as to the second, we foresaw
that once the council was set up, the next step would be to give the
Arabs increasing powers over the reserved subjects, and we would find
ourselves confronted by the danger of the premature crystallization of
the Jewish National Home. We would not agree to the council; we
fought it in Palestine and in London.

Again I must, in fairness, stress the good relationship which had
existed between us and Wauchope until that time. His attitude had been
positive and helpful ever since his arrival in the country. When I saw a
pro-Zionist administrator coming out to Palestine I was full of appre-
hension, and I usually gave him six to ten months in which to forget his
Zionist tendencies and revert to the regulation type of administrator
such as may be found on the Gold Coast or in Tanganyika or some other
British dependency. We became natives in his eyes, and he resented the
difficulties we created for him; we, on the other hand, resented the
application of Gold Coast administrative measures to a highly developed.

RIOT AND THE PEEL COMMISSION 381

highly differentiated, critical and skeptical society like the Yishuv in
Palestine. It says a great deal for the intellectual acumen and stamina
of Sir Arthur Wauchope that he kept his original ideals for four years,
and yielded only under the influence of events which were casting their
shadows on the life of the whole world.

Among the various counterproposals to the form of legislative council
urged by the Government, was one on which Jews and Arabs would be
equal in number, with balance of power held by British officials. This
seemed to me to present a possible solution. I knew the dangers inherent
in it, but I felt that we might find some compensation in the public
opinion of the world ; for the position in which we placed ourselves by our
refusal to consider the legislative council was, as I have explained, an
unfortunate one. The public heard the words '"legislative council for
Palestine”; it heard of Zionist opposition; the obvious conclusion was
that the Zionists were undemocratic, or antidemocratic! I had a second
point in mind : on a council with equal Jewish and Arab representation
there would be regular contacts between the two peoples; perhaps by
patience and by fair dealing we might diminish the fears which kept the
two peoples asunder. Fears are unconquerable by ordinary logic; but
they sometimes yield to daily contact.

The council, as we know, was never set up in any form ; but the fact
that I was prepared to consider it if there was equality of representation
was made the occasion for some of the bitterest attacks to which I have
ever been subjected. I was called not merely an appeaser, but a British
agent — ^and this accusation was periodically revived whenever I clashed
with, the extremists of the movement. It is no doubt still current. I can
only quote, in this connection, the words of Nietzsche: A'einefn ist

dies rtm^ dem ki dlss Sck^i'^nn/^

With the deterioration of the international situation, the rise of Hitler
Germany, the Italo- Abyssinian war, the preliminaries to the Civil War
in Spain, the lack of policy on the part of the democracies, new and
disturbing elements were injected into the picture. France's indecisiveness
toward Hitler, who was moving toward the Rhine, England’s in-
decisiveness toward Mussolini, who was sending his warships through
the Suez Canal, tended to give the Arabs the impression that with the
democracies force alone won concessions. In April 1936 rioting broke out
in Palestine, and a new and unhappy chapter opened in Zionist history.

The outbreaks were sporadic at first. In the general spirit of the period,
the Government did not act decisively. For a long time no serious effort
was made to cope with the rioting so that the Arabs gained the impression
that they had in fact chosen the means and the moment well. A month
elapsed, and the Arab leaders, encouraged by developments, formed the

382 TRIAL AND ERROR

Arab Higher Committee, headed by the Grand Mufti, and called a
general strike.

The connection between the Arab Higher Committee and the rioting
was clear enough. Fawzi Kawakji, the Syrian guerrilla fighter who
came into Palestine to organize the bandits, was an old friend of the
Mufti’s. The waylaying and murdering of Jewish travelers, the attacks
on Jewish settlements, the burning of Jewish fields, the uprooting of
Jewish trees, spread over the entire country. The Palestine administra-
tion, undoubtedly acting on instructions from London, encouraged the
intervention of the Arab states, and in August 1936 invited the Foreign
Minister of Iraq to negotiate with the Arab Higher Committee, thereby
giving a sort of official status to the employers of Kawakji. It was all in
the true spirit of ''appeasement.”

That military action was feeble, and administrative action unwise, was
the opinion of a British staff officer then serving in Palestine under
General Dill. In his account of the early months of the riots, "British
Rule and Rebellion,” H. J. Simpson writes: “The delay in obtaining
reinforcements, the restrictions placed on the actions of the troops from
the outset, and the latitude to the other side to obstruct their movement
became of secondary importance in view of the freedom of movement
allowed to rebel leaders.” And again: "The connection between the
Arab leaders in Palestine and the armed bands raised in Palestine, as
well as those brought in from abroad, seems to be established. The civil
authorities persisted in maintaining that there was no connection and
persisted in trying to squeeze a public pronouncement against the use of
armed force out of the Mufti . . . they refused to act vigorously against
the Arab leaders. Why that theory was fixed in their minds remains a
mystery.”

It was not much of a mystery to those who looked at Palestine in a
larger setting, and saw in it as it were the mirror of events in Spain, at
the other end of the Mediterranean, where England and France "persisted
in maintaining that there was no connection” between the rebels and the
Axis powers. Similarly, England was refusing to admit, at least publicly,
that Axis encouragement and Axis money were playing a part in the
Palestine riots.

Once the situation had been permitted to get out of hand, once the
bandits had organized in the hills, the military had a real problem on its
hands. An army is always at a disadvantage against guerrilla fighters,
especially in a country with the geographic features of Palestine. Fawzi
was a skillful fighter, and he managed his small forces well. In particular
he trained them to disband, melt into the villages, and reassemble. The
British troops, with their heavy equipment, could not cope with the light-
armed, fast-moving Arabs. Nor was the attitude of the Palestine ad-
ministration particularly helpful, as we have seen. The officer in com-

RIOT AND THE PEEL COMMISSION 383

mand, General Dill, was a brilliant military leader, as was proved later
in the war; but he rather resented, I believe, the awkward situation in
which he was placed.

In May 1936, the British Government decided to appoint a royal
commission to “investigate the causes of unrest and alleged grievances
of Arabs or of Jews.'' This was the now famous “Peel Commission," so
called from its chairman, Earl Peel — ^by far the most distinguished and
ablest of the investigatory bodies ever sent out to Palestine. Its members
were men with excellent training and in some cases of wide experience.
There were among them an ex-administrator of a province in India, a
professor of colonial history at Oxford, an ex- Ambassador, a judge of
the High Court, and a lawyer of eminence. The chairman was of minis-
terial rank. Many of us felt that this was not only an extremely competent
body, but that it would prove to be both thorough and impartial. The
findings of such a commission, we believed, would go a long way toward
solving our problems.

For my own part, I must state that when the commission arrived in
Palestine — ^this was not until November 1936 — and the time for the hear-
ings approached, I became deeply convinced that a new and possibly
decisive phase in our movement might now be beginning. Knowing
something of the records of the members of the commission, I had
complete confidence in their fairness and their intellectual honesty.
Nevertheless it was with considerable trepidation that I went up to
Jerusalem on November 25 to deliver my evidence. I remember that, as
I walked between two rows of spectators to the door of the building
where the sessions were being held, there were audible whispers on
either side of me '^Ha-shem yafsliach darkecho^^ (God prosper you on
your mission), and I felt that I not only carried the burden of these well-
wishers, and of countless others in other lands, but that I would be
speaking for generations long since dead, for those who lay buried in the
ancient and thickly populated cemeteries on Mount Scopus, and those
whose last resting places were scattered all over the world. And I knew
that any misstep of mine, any error, however involuntary, would be not
mine alone, but would redound to the discredit of my people. I was
aware, as on few occasions before or since, of a crushing sense of
responsibility.

I must confess, further, that the few friendly words addressed to me
in the way of introduction by the chairman, as he asked me to sit down,
meant a great deal to me, and perhaps carried more encouragement than
was intended. In them one felt the innate courtesy of a gentleman, whose
patience and kindliness at that time were the more remarkable as he
was in great physical pain. Lord Peel was suffering from cancer, and
died of it shortly after the publication of his report.

I began my address in slow, measured sentences. I had no prepared

384 TRIAL AND ERROR

text, for I could not on such an occasion have read out a written docu-
ment. I did, however, have comprehensive notes, which I had worked out
with my colleagues, and I kept close to these. Not knowing how patient
my auditors would be, I probably attempted to compress too much, but
after speaking for perhaps half an hour, I noticed to my deep joy that
they were following me with interest. They had moved forward, so that
their chairs almost formed a semicircle round me, and I did not have to
strain my voice. I went on practically without interruption for about an
hour and a half, when I asked for a drink and a short break, as I was
feeling a little faint. The chairman offered me something stronger, which
I refused. I was now at my ease, and resumed my address, which took up
another forty minutes or so.

I believe that the reader who has followed the narrative so far will al-
ready have some notion of the contents of my address, into which I sought
to put both the permanent principles of the Zionist movement and the
immediate urgency of the Jewish problem. I spoke of the six million
Jews (a bitter and unconscious prophecy of the number exterminated
not long after by Hitler) ‘‘pent up in places where they are not wanted,
and for whom the world is divided into places where they cannot live
and places which they may not enter.'' For them “a certificate for
Palestine is the highest boon. One in twenty, one in thirty may get it,
and for them it is redemption." Seeking to explain how they had reached
this condition, I told of the deterioration of Jewish life in Central and
Eastern Europe under the impact of new forces. But I sought to go
deeper, into more enduring causes. “When one speaks of the Jewish
people one speaks of a people which is a minority everywhere, a majority
nowhere, which is to some extent identified with the races among which
it lives, but is still not quite identical. It is a disembodied ghost of a
race, and it inspires suspicion, and suspicion breeds hatred. There should
be one place in the world, in God’s wide world, where we could live and
express ourselves in accordance with our character, and make our
contribution to civilization in our own way, and through our own
channels."

I spoke next of the Balfour Declaration, of which “it has sometimes
been glibly said, ‘Here is a document, somewhat vague in its nature,
issued in time of war. It was a wartime expedient.' " I disproved, I
believe, that the Balfour Declaration had been issued hastily and
frivolously; and I cited the words of Lord Robert Cecil as to what the
Balfour Declaration had been intended to convey: “Arabia for the
Arabs, Judaea for the Jews, Armenia for the Armenians." I spoke
finally of what we had achieved in Palestine, which, at the time of the
Peel Commission, contained four hundred thousand Jews as against the
fifty-five thousand of the time of the Balfour Declaration; pointing, of

RIOT AND THE PEEL COMMISSION 385

course, to the general benefits which had accrued to the country from
our work.

So much for the opening address; I had an opportunity, on ensuing
days, to go into the details of our difficulties, during a long and thorough
cross-examination. I was greatly impressed by the seriousness, patience,
and relevance of the proceedings. I left Jerusalem and returned to
Rehovoth, to resume my laboratory work, but was recalled to Jerusalem
on several occasions to appear before the commission.

The subject of the partition of Palestine was first broached to me by
the commission at a session which was held in camera on January 8, 1937.
No colleague was with me. I was asked how the idea struck me, and
naturally answered that I could not tell on the spur of the moment, nor
would I give my own impressions except after consultation with my
colleagues. Actually I felt that the suggestion held out great possibilities
and hopes. Something new had been bom into the Zionist movement,
something which had to be handled with great care and tenderness, which
should not be permitted to become a matter for crude slogans and angry
controversy. I remember saying not long afterward to a colleague: ‘‘A
Jewish State, the idea of Jewish independence in Palestine, even if only
in part of Palestine, is such a lofty thing that it ought to be treated like
the Ineffable Name, which is never pronounced in vain. By talking
about it too much, by dragging it down to the level of the banal, you
desecrate that which should be approached only with reverence.’'

The idea of partition was, as I have said, first imparted to me in
camera, A few days later I informed Professor Coupland, one of the
leading members of the commission, that this was an impossible position
for me. I was the President of a democratic organization, and I could
not give the commission my views on such an important subject without
having consulted my colleagues. My meeting with Professor Coupland
was in itself not quite regular. I did not at any time attempt to have
private conversations with members of the commission; this meeting
took place at Professor Coupland's request, not in Jerusalem, but in the
village of Nahalal. There, on a rainy winter day, we sat for hours in a
small cottage, while Professor Coupland put before me the various
alternative schemes for partition which had already been discussed in
the commission.

It was obvious from the beginning that the territory to be ^'offered"
us would be a small one. Part of it would be the Negev, or southern
desert. A possible alternative would be a shift to the north, leaving out
the Negev. I will not go into further details here ; but I advised Professor
Coupland that I would have to take the matter up with my colleagues.

Apart from the practical details of a partition plan, there was the
fundamental question of partition as such. It had, besides its political and
economic problems, its religious aspect. I took the matter up with a

S86 TRIAL AND ERROR

number of men for whose religious convictions I had the deepest respect,
but men not involved in any way in the politics of the movement, and I
did not find too much resistance. I put it to them thus: ''I know that
God promised Palestine to the children of Israel, but I do not know what
boundaries He set. I believe that they were wider than the ones now
proposed, and may have included Trans-Jordan. Still, we have foregone
the eastern part and are now asked to forego some of the western part.
If God will keep His promise to His people in His own time, our business
as poor humans, who live in a difficult age, is to save as much as we can
of the remnants of Israel. By adopting this project we can save more
of them than by continuing the Mandatory policy.’’

It was my own deep conviction that God had always chosen small
countries through which to convey His messages to humanity. It was
from Judaea and from Greece, not from Carthage or Babylonia that
the great ideas which form the most precious possessions of man-
kind emerged. I believed that a small Jewish State, well organized,
living in peace with its neighbors, a State on which would be lavished
the love and devotion of the Jewish communities throughout the world
— such a State would be a great credit to us and an equally great con-
tribution to civilization.

There w^ere — and are — immediate political considerations which in-
clined me toward the idea of partition. I saw in the establishment of a
Jewish State a real possibility of coming to terms with the Arabs. As
long as the Mandatory policy prevails, the Arabs are afraid that we
shall absorb the whole of Palestine. Say what we will about the preserva-
tion of their rights, they are dominated by fear and will not listen to
reason. A Jewish State with definite boundaries internationally guaran-
teed would be something final; the transgressing of these boundaries
would be an act of war which the Jews would not commit, not merely
because of its moral implications, but because it would arouse the
whole world against them. Instead of being a minority in Palestine,
we would be a majority in our own State, and be able to deal on terms
of equality with our Arab neighbors in Palestine, Egypt and Iraq. As
to our immediate neighbors, the Palestinians, we would have a great
many interests in common — customs, harbors, railways, irrigation and
development projects; such a community of interests, if properly
handled, becomes the basis of peaceful and fruitful co-operation.

^ My hope that the question of partition would be dealt with on the
high level to which it belonged was disappointed. It became the focus
of one of the most violent controversies that has ever divided the Zion-
ist movement. The Twentieth Zionist Congress, held in Basle in August
1937, in the gathering shadows of the Nazi domination of Europe, broke
into the Ja-sager and the Nein-sager, the proponents and the opponents
of partition ; not, I am compelled to say, on the merits of the question.

RIOT AND THE PEEL COMMISSION 387

but very often on the basis of pre judgments. I pleaded in vain that in
the opinion of our most capable experts a Jewish State in part of
Palestine would be able to absorb one hundred thousand immigrants a
year, and sustain a Jewish population of two and a half to three mil-
lions. The divisions of opinion followed familiar lines, and I found
myself again opposed by the combination of an American group, the
Misrachi, and that section of the Revisionists which had not seceded
from the Zionist Organization.

But even the opposition could not wholly ignore the threat which
now hung over the Jews of Europe, and the prospects of substantial
rescue which a Jewish State held out made impossible outright rejec-
tion of partition. The following resolutions, among others, were ac-
cepted :

The Congress declares that the scheme of partition put forward
by the Royal Commission is unacceptable.

The Congress empowers the Executive to enter into negotiations
with a view to ascertaining the precise terms of His Majesty’s Gov-
ernment for the proposed establishment of a Jewish State.

In such negotiations the Executive shall not commit either itself
or the Zionist Organization, but in the event of the emergence of a
definite scheme for the establishment of a Jewish State, such scheme
shall be brought before a newly elected Congress for decision.

In this roundabout way the Congress indicated that it was ready to
talk partition, and the issue seemed chiefly to be between those who had
the courage to say so frankly, and those who wanted to retain a reputa-
tion for uncompromising maximalism.

But the battle was fought in vain, at least for the time being. The
partition plan put forward by the British Government on the basis of
the Peel Report was not followed up seriously. The rumor was started,
and gained wide currency, that the Jews were against partition. This
was simply not true. Considering the vital departure from the original
Zionist program which partition represented, considering also the
internal political by-play of the various parties, the two to one vote of
the Congress for the above-mentioned resolutions was very significant.
I explained all this to Ormsby-Gore and to members of the Mandates
Commission shortly after the Congress. That I had correctly interpreted
the Jewish attitude toward partition has been made very clear to the
world since that time.

CHAPTER 37

Toward Nullification

The White Paper of 1937 — Surrender to the Arab Terrorists
— Letter to Ormshy-Gore — Havlagah in Palestine — Letter to
the High Commissioner — Drift toward Chaos in Palestine
— My Warnings — The Woodhead Commission — Sabotaging
Partition Proposal — The Palestine Administration's ^^Neu-
trality^^ — Orde Wingate in Palestine — His Personality and
His Career.

Britain's ofBdal offer of a partition plan was contained in a
White Paper issued early in July 1937. The offer was accompanied by
a series of interim administrative measures — ''while the form of a
scheme of partition is being worked out" — ^which struck heavily at the
Jewish National Home, These measures were put into effect before
Jewish opinion on partition had been tested. They were the first steps
toward the nullification of the Balfour Declaration : actual nullification
came with the White Paper of 1939. It was the classic technique of
the step-by-step sellout of small nations which the great democracies
practiced in the appeasement period.

The Government White Paper of 1937 was based on the Peel Report.
The latter was an extraordinary document. On the one hand it testified
to the achievements of the Jews in Palestine, on the other hand it
recommended measures which seemed to us to be in complete contradic-
tion with that testimony. The report put an end to the persistent false-
hood that Jewish land purchases and land development had led to the
displacement of Arabs ; then it recommended severe restrictions on
Jewish purchases of land. It asserted that Jewish immigration had
brought benefits to the Arab people; then it recommended the severe
curtailment of Jewish immigration. And it did this last in a form which
was all the more shocking because it practically conceded the point
made by the Arab terrorists, and undermined the very foundations of
the Mandate.

By the terms of the Mandate, and by the agreement between the
Jewish Agency and Great Britain, Jewish immigration into Palestine
was to be controlled by the economic absorptive capacity of the country.
This was the safeguard against undue harm to the population of the

388

TOWARD NULLIFICATION 389

country. The Jews were in Palestine ""as of right and not on sufferance/'
and they came there as the opportunities were created for their employ-
ment. It was an arrangement which had worked according to the Peel
Commission; Jews had come into Palestine in large numbers — over
forty thousand in 1934, over sixty thousand in 1935 — and the Arabs
had benefited economically by their coming. Now the Peel Report
recommended that in granting immigration permits to the Zionists,
""political and psychological factors must be taken into consideration."
In other words, our entry into Palestine was made conditional on the
mood of the Arabs. It was not put so frankly, of course. That last
brutal clarification was reserved for the White Paper of 1939. But
that was what it amounted to. Arab terrorism had won its first major
victory. The Mandate -was pronounced unworkable.

The Peel Report and the White Paper were issued simultaneously;
and I felt it to be a very bad augury that I could not, almost up to the
last minute, obtain an advance copy of the report. I called up Ormsby-
Gore, then the Colonial Minister, and angry words passed between us.
A day or two later I wrote him at length. The letter follows in its en-
tirety. I make no apology for reproducing it, and one or two others
belonging to that time. There has been so much talk about my inability
or refusal to stand up to British officialdom, (""British agent," it will
be recalled, are words that have been used about me) that I feel myself
entitled to the publication of these letters. It might be added, in this
connection, that it is easy to hurl denunciations at a government from
the platform at a public meeting ; it is another matter to carry the fight
to the men with whom you are negotiating.

London

July 4, 1937

Dear Ormsby-Gore:

I have to thank you for your letter of July 1st. I am extremely sorry
that you should have been distressed at my tone and manner over the
telephone. It was certainly never my intention to say anything that
might give you personal offense, and if I have done so, I sincerely
regret it.

You think that I am under some grave misapprehension — ^namely,
that the Cabinet will be taking far-reaching and final decisions of policy
before the publication of the Report. This is not the main cause of my
present anxieties. I quite understand that it would be impossible for
the Cabinet, in so short a space of time, and occupied as it must be
with many other very grave problems, to come to a quick and final
decision on the Report. I also fully appreciate that time must elapse
before the Report can be implemented, either wholly or in part. Still,
your refusal to let me have a copy of it for a few days in advance of its

390 TRIAL AND ERROR

publication has rendered more difficult for me an anyhow very difficult
situation.

We are now on the eve of events which will shape the destiny of
Palestine and of the Jewish people for years to come, and which, as you
said, will also prove of vital importance for the British Empire. May
I therefore tell you, with perfect frankness, how I see the present
situation? I have no desire to indulge in mere retrospect, still less in
useless recrimination : but possibly what I have to say may be of value
for you in the times that lie ahead, when you will have to decide the
fate of Palestine.

In the last twenty years, and especially in the last two years since my
re-election to the Presidency of the Jewish Agency, I have had ample
opportunities to observe the attitude of the Palestine Administration
toward us and the Mandate; and the conviction has been forced upon
me by my experience that the Mandate for Palestine has hardly had a
real chance, and that now as in the past it is being, consciously or un-
consciously, undermined by those called upon to carry it out. It was
the leitmotif of my evidence before the Royal Commission that things
should never have been allowed to come to this pass; and that the
present situation has not been brought about by any inherent defect
in the Mandate (though this may have its weaknesses like all works
of man). I understand from you that the Royal Commission, for whose
impartiality and judgment I have the highest respect, have condemned
the Mandate. I am prepared to accept their judgment of the situation,
but with one fundamental reservation ; it is not the Mandate that should
be condemned, but the people who administered it. Had it been the
aim of the Palestine Administration to prove that the Mandate was
unworkable, it could be congratulated on the choice of the methods
adopted in the past two years. This is the crux of the matter. A situa-
tion had been artificially created in which nothing was left for the Royal
Commission but to bring in this verdict against the Mandate; and thus
their work was vitiated from the very outset. What could they think,
coming fresh to Palestine and staying there for a few months, when
they found that the country had been in a state of armed revolt for
the better part of a year, successfully defying the armed forces of the
British Empire? They were inevitably driven to the conclusion that
there must be some deep underlying cause, a movement of exceptional
magnitude and with wide ramifications outside of Palestine ; and
naturally the Administration had every interest in persuading them of
the existence of such a cause, and in painting the situation in the darkest
colors in order to justify its own record. What was that record? Com-
plete inaction; paralysis of Government; surrender to crime; demorali-
zation of the Civil Service — ^men willing and able to do their duty
prevented by the faintheartedness of their superiors: denial of justice;

TOWARD NULLIFICATION

391

failure to protect the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, Jewish
and Arab; in short, a condition of things unthinkable in any other
part of the British Empire. These things fall, to a great extent, into
your own term of office. In vain did we appeal to 3^ou to see authority
re-established in Palestine. Almost a year ago, when Wauchope gratui-
tously brought the Arab Kings upon the Palestinian stage, I pointed
out to you the very grave dangers of this measure. For a moment the
Government bethought itself, stopped the intervention of Nuri Pasha
(a ‘"force” that faded out overnight), decided to try the strong hand
in Palestine and sent out General Dill at the head of an army. But the
High Commissioner soon succeeded in frustrating this attempt and
turned it into an expensive farce — ^the military authorities will best be
able to tell you this part of the story. Through no fault of theirs, order
was not re-established in Palestine, and Wauchope’s regime continues,
inflicting untold damage on us, and earning no credit for the British
Government. The Mufti is still at large, and pandered to by the Ad-
ministration; under its very eyes he now travels about, organizing
armed resistance to the forthcoming recommendations of the Royal
Commission, and enlisting the help of destructive elements in the neigh-
boring countries. The Arab Kings are being mobilized once more to
impress His Majesty’s Government, and especially the Foreign Office,
with the bogey of Pan-Islam and the strength of the Arab national
movement — a movement which is crude in its nature, which tries to
work up the hatred of the British and the Jews, looks to Mussolini and
Hitler as its heroes, and is supported by Italian money — ^you know it
all, and still you allow these things to go on.

I take it that you have read the report for 1936 submitted by the
Palestine Administration to the League of Nations Council. That report
contains a deliberate distortion of the truth. Having failed to discharge
the most elementary duty of any civilized Government, namely to main-
tain order and protect the lives and property of law-abiding citizens, the
Administration now tries to suggest that we have been guilty of pro-
voking the riots. I enclose a copy of my letter to the High Commissioner,
which he has refrained from answering in writing. The blaming of
the victims is a procedure with which I am painfully acquainted after
pogroms in Czarist Russia, but I never expected to see it adopted by
a British Administration. Can you possibly uphold such a report in
Geneva ?

We shall shortly be asked to acquiesce in a revolutionary plan which
would amount to the abolition of the Mandate and a partition of Pales-
tine. Not having seen the report, I am naturally unable to discuss its
proposals. But I see that the High Commissioner has been specially
summoned from Palestine, I presume to advise the Government on the
statement of policy which you are about to issue; and is returning to

39a TRIAL AND ERROR

Palestine to maintain “order” there if a revolt breaks out. Frankly,
considering his record during the past fifteen months, I view the immedi-
ate and the more distant future with the gravest apprehension. I under-
stand that, if the scheme of partition is adopted, a period of transition
is to intervene before a Jewish State is established. This will be a most
delicate and dangerous time. Even the best proposals made by the
Royal Commission are liable to suffer the fate of the Mandate, and for
the same reasons ; and the result will be that after the Mandate has
been discredited and scrapped, there will be nothing to take its place.

I am speaking to you frankly, and without any of the circumlocutions
usually employed in discussing such matters. The time is too serious
and too much is at stake. I see no future for any constructive policy
unless there is a complete change of heart and a clean sweep in Pales-
tine. Successive Colonial Secretaries have left us to struggle all these
years with an Administration which has been inefficient, unimaginative,
obstructive and unfriendly. There have been and undoubtedly are good
men among them, but they have not been able to prevail against the
dead weight of others of a very different stamp. In spite of these, we
have succeeded, and the greater our success, the bitterer they became.
The process has reached its culminating point in the last two years, and
it was my fate to bear the brunt of it. This is the more tragic for me
when I see you at the head of the Colonial Office, you who have helped
us wholeheartedly in earlier days ; and I trust that even now you have
not become “impartial” in the sense of the Palestine Administration,
who refuse to distinguish between right and wrong, and try, in fact,
to obliterate the difference between them.

Just before the riots broke out I had an intimate talk with the High
Commissioner. He asked me whether I thought troubles were to be
expected. I replied that in Czarist Russia I knew that if the Govern-
ment did not wish for troubles, they never happened. The Palestine
Administration did not wish for riots, but has done very little to prevent
them; has let things go from bad to worse; has allowed the situation
to get out of hand, and the country to sink into anarchy. Perhaps at
the beginning of the troubles some officers were not even altogether
sorry to see such a reply given to the debates in Parliament which had
destroyed their scheme for a Legislative Council, and which they
wrongly assumed to have been brought on by us. In the last resort,
some of these men, with no faith in the Jewish National Home, can
hardly have regretted to see the policy of the Balfour Declaration and
of the Mandate discredited and dishonored.

What hope is there, then, for the future, after twenty years of such
an Administration? This is at the root of my very grave anxiety. The
account given of the disturbances in the Annual Report of the Pales-

TOWARD NULLIFICATION 393

tine Administration to the League is only the last link in a long chain
of obstruction and injustice.

You close your letter by urging me not to burn my boats, nor to go
off at the deep end. I have no boats to burn. You further ask me not
to come up with a flourish of trumpets. Can you in the last twenty
years point to a single occasion on which I have done so ? I have borne
most things in silence; I have defended the British Administration
before my own people, from public platforms, at Congresses, in all parts
of the world, often against my own better knowledge, and almost in-
variably to my own detriment. Why did I do so? Because to me close
co-operation with Great Britain was the cornerstone of our policy in
Palestine. But this co-operation remained unilateral — ^it was unrequited
love.

When you speak of ''consultation” you suggest that were you to con-
sult me on policy with regard to Palestine, you would hardly know
where you could stop! I claim that what Palestine is now is due pri-
marily to the work of my people ; I have had my share in that work, and
I represent them. This was the foundation of my claim, and I leave it
to history to decide whether the claim was excessive.

You ask me for some measure of trust ; to no one would I be happier
to give it, because I remember — ^and I shall never forget — ^your old
friendship, and the work we did in common in the difficult days now
far removed. But however I may feel toward you personally, how can
I trust the system with which you have now unfortunately become
identified? You want me slowly to "feel my way.” But I am not an
isolated individual, and I ought to be able from the very outset to give
a lead to my people. I cannot do so if I receive the Report, which you
describe as voluminous and complex, two days before publication, about
the same time as it will, I imagine, be given to the Lobby correspondents
of newspapers. On my part there will be no flourish of trumpets — ^that
is anyhow not my style — ^but something which may, in the result, prove
very much worse : enforced silence.

The letter to the High Commissioner, above referred to, was ad-
dressed to him in London, where he had arrived for consultation with
the Colonial Office. The reader will find it self-explanatory; but he
should also bear in mind the total background. During those years of
Arab violence the Jews of Palestine adopted and resolutely followed,
in the face of the utmost provocation, the policy of Havlagah, or of self-
restraint, which I think may be properly described as one of the great
moral political acts of modern times. The Haganah remained through-
out a defense organization, and the Yishuv as a whole did not believe
in, did not practice or encourage, counterattack or retaliation. Yet it is
hard to describe the heartsickness and bitterness of the Jews as they

394 TRIAL AND ERROR

watched the larger Hitler terror engulf their kin in Europe, while the
gates of Palestine were being shut as a concession to the Arabs and
the Palestine administration failed to proceed with the necessary vigor
against the Arab terrorists.

London

30th June, 1937

Dear Sir Arthur:

I have just read the remarkable and peculiar account of last year’s
disturbances given in the Government’s Report to the Mandates Com-
mission. The story of the events at the outset of the disturbances has
been made to convey the impression that these were to a large extent
provoked by a series of Jewish attacks on Arabs. Further, in the record
of the casualties suffered between the 19th and the 22nd April, no
indication is given of the fact that not one of the Arabs killed, was killed
by a Jew. The impression thus given of the outbreak of the disturbances
is at variance with your own communique of the 19th April, and any
unbiased person with a knowledge of the facts must see in this account
a calculated distortion of the truth.

In the entire Report, there is not a single reference to, still less a
word of praise for, the restraint which the Jews have shown during the
long months of violence directed against them by the Arabs. You your-
self have, on various occasions, both in public and in private, expressed
your admiration for the behavior of our people. That there should not
be a single reference to it in the Report is, I think, an indictment of
the authorities themselves.

I am both astonished and pained that such an account should appear
in an official record which must be assumed to have received your
approval.

The posture of affairs in the summer of 1937 may be gathered from
the two foregoing letters. In the months that followed things went from
bad to worse. In Palestine there was a spurt of military activity which
promised for a time to put an end to the riots — Orde Wingate was
then in the country; but the improvement was more than offset by the
apparent indifference which the British Government manifested toward
its own partition plan. Here I was, exerting myself to break down the
resistance to the plan in our ranks, while the Government seemed to
grow increasingly cool toward it. On the last day of that year I wrote
to Sir John Shuckburgh, Permanent Under Secretary for the Colonies :

.... Nearly six months have elapsed since the Report of the Royal
Commission and the White Paper were published, yet nothing has been
done to advance matters. This inactivity of the Government in the

TOWARD NULLIFICATION

395

political sphere is largely neutralizing the good effect produced by the
active measures adopted by it in regard to security. There is utter
confusion as to the political intentions of His Majesty's Government,
which is doing infinite harm to the economic life of the country, to the
authority of the Government and to the prospects of an eventual settle-
ment. . . . The atmosphere of doubt and suspense thus engendered
provides an ideal ground for every schemer and intriguer, self-appointed
or foreign-paid, to try his hand at advertising alternative ‘"solutions."
All these schemes have one and the same object: the liquidation of
the National Home and the virtual handing over of the country to the
clique of so-called Arab leaders who organized the disturbances of last
year and from their hiding places are now running the terrorist cam-
paign . . . The terms are always the same: liquidation of the Mandate
and Jewish acceptance of minoi'ity status, the Jewish position to be
protected by that invaluable instrument of “minority rights" of which
we have had such instructive experience in Eastern Europe. Let there
be no mistake about the action of the representative bodies of the Jewish
people to any of these schemes. Jews are not going to Palestine to
become in their ancient home “Arabs of the Mosaic Faith" or to ex-
change their German or Polish ghetto for an Arab one. Whoever knows
what Arab Government looks like, what “minority status" signifies
nowadays, and what a Jewish ghetto in an Arab state means — ^there are
quite a number of precedents — ^will be able to form his own conclusions
as to what would be in store for us if we accepted the position allotted
to us in these “solutions." It is not for the purpose of subjecting the
Jewish people, which still stands in the front rank of civilization, to the
rule of a set of unscrupulous Levantine politicians that this supreme
effort is being made in Palestine. All the labors and sacrifices here ow^e
their inspiration to one thing alone: to the belief that this at least is
going to mean freedom and the end of the ghetto. Could there be a
more appalling fraud on the hopes of a martyred people than to reduce
it to ghetto status in the very land where it was promised national
freedom?

Those who advance these schemes know perfectly well that there is
no prospect of their acceptance by the Jews. Their purpose is not to
find a solution which would meet our ever more urgent need for a
national home but, on the contrary, to strangle our effort of national
reconstruction. The same forces which last year used every device of
violence and blackmail to destroy the Mandate are busy, now that they
believe that object to have been essentially achieved, in undermining
partition, which, they perceive, might still offer a chance of realizing
the Jewish National Home even though in a much reduced area.

So, month after month, the technique of keeping a promise to the ear

TRIAL AND ERROR

396

and breaking it to the heart, was applied to us. The offer of partition
was stultified, first by delay, second by the manner in which the British
Government approached it practically. Another commission was ap-
pointed, the Woodhead Commission, to suggest actual plans. But the
instructions given it — ^the terms of reference — were such as to foredoom
any sort of plan. For what was bound to emerge was a Jewish territory
so small that there would hardly be standing room for the Jews who
wanted to come ; development and growth would be out of the question.
Plans would be offered only for the planned purpose of being rejected.

Meanwhile the ground was burning under our feet. We saw the
Second World War advancing inexorably, and hope for our millions
in Europe diminishing. And the frustration was all the more unbearable
because we knew that in the coming struggle the Jewish National Home
could play a very considerable role in that part of the world as the one
reliable ally of the democracies. It was quite fantastic to note the in-
genuity and inventiveness which England expended, to her own hurt,
on the shelving of that ally. But was not this the essence of the appease-
ment panic? I have already mentioned the assiduous spreading of the
report that the Jews were opposed to the idea of partition as such. To
make assurance double sure, the partition plan was finally put forward
in obviously impossible form. Then, on top of that, quite a discussion
developed in England on the strategic unimportance of Palestine as
compared with Cyprus. In the letter to Sir John Shuckburgh, above
quoted, I said:

Allow me to say one word on the strategical question which is so
much in the fore of the discussion at the present. It would be presump-
tuous for a mere layman like myself to express any opinion as to the
relative strategical values of Haifa and Cyprus, but there are some
crude facts which even a plain chemist can understand. The pipe line,
the aerodromes and the Carmel cannot be removed to Cyprus, nor the
railway to Egypt, or the connection with the Suez Canal and the cor-
ridor, to Baghdad. More I would not presume to say on this point.

To Ormsby-Gore I wrote a little later, in April 1938:

We could form a force of something like 40,000 men now and with
increased immigration into the future State area such a force would
rapidly grow. I do not wish to overstate my case in any way, but I
would like you and your colleagues to know it. The position is analogous
to that of 1914-1917, if an5dhing much more serious for everybody con-
cerned and for us in particular. This again is another very urgent
reason for speedy action. I have had some conversation on this subject
with General Georges of the French General Staff, and found him very
understanding indeed.

TOWARD NULLIFICATION 397

The futility of these arguments, and of all the practical considerations
behind them, is only too well known. The British Government had
simply made up its mind to crystallize the Jewish National Home and
if not for the stubborn resistance of the Jews, who refuse to be trifled
with in this matter, they would have succeeded.

In Palestine the Arab terror continued, with ups and downs which
reflected not so much the fortunes of war as the fluctuations in British
determination. In the autumn of 1936 there was vigorous action against
the Arab terrorists, with good results. Numbers of Jews were enrolled
as ghaffirim, or supernumerary police, for the defense of the colonies.
The country was comparatively quiet during the presence of the Peel
Commission. In the summer of 1937 the unrest intensified. Between
April 1936 and March 1937, ninety three Jews were killed and over
four hundred wounded. Damage to Jewish property amounted to
nearly half a million pounds; but this does not take into accoxmt the
heavy losses due to the diversion of men from productive work to
defense, the disruption of communications and the economic deteriora-
tion due both to terrorism and the uncertainty of the political future.

In September the military again acted with energy, and again there
was a lull in the terrorism ; in October it again flared up. In the early
months of 1938 the guerrillas in the hills were particularly active. In
1938, sixty nine British were killed, ninety two Jews and four hundred
and eighty six Arab civilians. Over one thousand rebels were killed in
action. The disturbances did not die down until September 1939, when
the war began.

During the entire period of the rioting the Jews of Palestine ex-
hibited that moral discipline of Haz^lagah, or self-restraint, which, follow-
ing the highest traditions of Zionism, won the admiration of liberal
opinion all over the world. The consistency with which this policy was
maintained was the more remarkable when we consider that violence
paid political dividends to the Arabs, while Jewish Havlagah was ex-
pected to be its own reward. It did not even win official recognition.
Sir Arthur Wauchope’s report — ^the subject of my letter to him, on
p. 394 — ^illustrates the point. The Jews followed their tradition of moral
discipline, the Palestine administration followed its tradition of bracket-
ing Jews and Arabs "'impartially” in the "disturbances.” It looked very
much like incitement of Jews to terrorism, and the human thing hap-
pened when a dissident Jewish minority broke ranks at last in the
summer of 1938, taking its cue from the Arabs — ^and from the admin-
istration. But it was still a very small minority. The Yishuv as a whole,
then as now, stood firm against Jewish terrorism.

The darkness of those years is relieved by the memory of the strange
and brilliant figure mentioned a few pages back — Orde Wingate, who
has sometimes been called "the Lawrence of Judaea.” He won that

398 TRIAL AND ERROR

title not only for his military exploits as the leader of the Jewish groups
which were organized against the terrorist activities, but for his pas-
sionate sympathy — one might say his self-identification — ^with the
highest ideals of Zionism.

Of his gifts as a soldier, especially as the organizer and leader of
the famous Chindits in Burma, there are several brilliant descriptions
in contemporaneous literature, and it is not for me to pass judgment
on them. But I can testify that he was idolized by the men who fought
under him, and that they were filled with admiration for his qualities
of endurance, courage, and originality. There are hundreds who recall
how, having to cope with the Arab guerrillas who descended on the
Haifa-Mosul pipe line from time to time, destroyed a section of it, and
retreated as fast as they had come, Wingate created a special motor-
cycle squad to patrol the whole length of the line, and by matching
speed against speed, eliminated the threat. The Jews under his command
were especially feared by the Arabs. Wingate used to tell me that when,
at' the head of a Jewish squad, he ambushed a group of raiders, he
would hear a shout: '"Run! These are not British soldiers! They are
JewsT’

I met Wingate and his beautiful young wife, Lorna, at Government
House in Jerusalem. I was immediately struck by his powerful person-
ality and by his spiritual outlook not only on problems in Palestine, but
on those of the world at large; He came often to my house in Rehovoth,
traveling alone in his little car, armed to the teeth. From the beginning
he showed himself a fanatical Zionist, and he had come to his views
not under any personal influence or propaganda, but by the effect of
Zionist literature on his deep and lifelong study of the Bible. In this
his superiors — ^Wingate had the rank of captain in the Palestine intel-
ligence service — were entirely out of sympathy with his views; he in
turn chafed under the command of men whom he considered intellectually
and morally below him.

His two great intellectual passions were military science and the
Bible, and there was in him a fusion of the student and the man of
action which reminded me of T. E. Lawrence. There were other re-
minders, in his personality: his intenseness, his whimsicality, and his
originality. I thought of Lawrence more than once when Wingate sat
opposite me, arguing fiercely, and boring me through with his eyes;
and I did not learn until many months after we had met and become
friends that he was in fact a distant blood relative of Lawrence’s.

To complete his Zionist education Wingate used to repair for days
at a stretch to some of the settlements — ^Ain Harod being his favorite —
and there he would try to speak Hebrew with the settlers and familiar-
ize himself with their outlook and their way of life, to which he was
greatly drawn. He was often very impatient with me and with what

TOWARD NULLIFICATION 399

he called my cunctatorial methods. He was as critical of the Government
as of his superiors, and preached the doctrine that unless one forced
it, the Government would never do anything for us; the Palestine
administration, in his opinion, consisted almost without exception of
enemies of the Zionist movement.

He said, more than once: "‘You must find your way to Downing
Street, go up to the Prime Minister and tell him that everything is
wrong, the Government is letting you down, is behaving treacherously.
And having said that, don’t wait for an answer, leave the room.”

To which I usually replied, “I won’t have to leave it, if I follow your
advice. I shall be thrown out.” Much as I admired and loved Wingate,
I did not think that his diplomatic abilities in any way matched his
military performance or his personal integrity. Shortly before his
death he wrote me from the Far East, and in this, his last letter to
me, he admitted that my policy was the right one, the only one that
could be pursued with any hope of success. He apologized for having
chivvied me so often on my methods ; the apology was not necessary —
I knew in what spirit his reproaches had been made. My wife and I both
loved and revered him.

Perhaps his own life taught him toward the end. He was a man who
did not suffer fools gladly, was trenchant in his criticism of our betters,
and was always in hot water with his superiors. General Wavell writes
of him, after praising his brilliant work in Abyssinia: “When it was
all over he sent to my headquarters a memorandum that would almost
have justified my placing him under arrest for insubordination.” When
Wingate w^as on leave in London, during the war, he would get hold of
all sorts of people and preach Zionism to them. Amongst others he
hit on Lord Beaverbrook, whose anti-Zionist views are well known. In
the course of the argument which developed, Beaverbrook tried to
rebut Wingate saying, “I think thus and thus,” and Wingate inter-
rupted with: “What you think doesn’t matter a damn; what matters
is what God thinks, and that you don’t know.” Beaverbrook wasn’t
accustomed to this kind of talk, and complained to the War Office that
a young officer was going about town making propaganda for Jews,
an occupation unsuitable to his rank and the King’s uniform. Wingate
received a black mark, and this added to the many difficulties he had to
contend with despite his brilliant performance on the battlefield.

After the Abyssinian campaign Wingate, desperately sick with
malaria, and almost constantly drugged with quinine, became so em-
broiled with his superior officers that he fell seriously ill, and was
hospitalized in Cairo. On returning to London he was shoved into an
obscure job training raw recruits in some small place near London,
being adjudged too unbalanced to command men in a responsible capac-
ity. Had this continued for a longer time, it would have meant his

TRIAL AND ERROR

400

moral and physical collapse. He turned to me for advice. T was ignorant
of military procedure, and though I was anxious to help him hardly
knew where to begin. Then it occurred to me that I might put his case
before Lord Horder, a leading London physician and a very enlight-
ened and sympathetic person. To him I recounted briefly the facts of
Wingate’s career, and asked him to go before the Army Medical Coun-
cil and testify, if he thought fit, to Wingate’s reliability and sense of
responsibility. He did this, and before long Wingate received an ap-
pointment — again under Wavell — ^to India, where he organized his
famous Chindits for the Burma campaign behind the Japanese lines.
His achievement in this enterprise has become one of the war’s legends.
He was killed in an airplane accident when he insisted on flying to an
outpost in the jungle against the advice of the pilot. His body was not
found until some three years later.

Wingate’s death was an irreparable loss to the British Army, to the
Jewish cause, and to my wife and myself personally. While he was
commanding the Chindits in Burma, Churchill learned of his exploits
and recalled him to London to attend the Allied Conference in Quebec.
On his return to London he was promoted to the rank of major general,
and it was vouchsafed us to see him for a few days, happy to have
found recognition at last, and modestly resplendent in his new uniform.
He left soon after for his command in the Far East, and this was the
last his friends saw of him.

He had one consuming desire which was not fulfilled: he wanted to
lead a British Army into Berlin. When, after long negotiation and dis-
cussion, the Jewish Brigade was agreed upon and actually formed, I
applied for the services of Wingate, but this request was, for obvious
reasons — ^as I think — ^refused. The idea of a Jewish fighting force was
never popular with the pundits of the War Office ; and to have had such
a unit headed by an arch-Zionist like Wingate was just too much for
the generals in Whitehall. The refusal was definite and complete.

CHAPTER 38

The White Paper

Partition Torpedoed — The Tripartite Conference, February-
March, ip 39 — Days of Berchtesgaden and Gote'sberg —
The Coffin Boats on the Mediterranean — The Patria — Lord
Halifax's Astounding Proposal — How the White Paper Was
Prepared — The Betrayal of Czechoslovakia — Jctn Masaryk's
Tragic Visit — Negotiations in Egypt — Last Warning to Cham-
berlain — His Infatuation with Appeasement — The White Paper
Debated in Parliament — The Jews Unanimously Reject the
White Paper,

.A.T THE time it issued the Peel Report, in 1937, the British Gov-
ernment began to set up the Woodhead Commission, which was to
submit a partition plan. The commission did not proceed to Palestine
until April 1938; and in October of that year it published a report
stating that it had no practical partition plan to offer. The following
month the Government rejected the idea of partition. It looked as
though the commission had been appointed merely to pave the way for a
predetermined course of action for which no commission was necessary.

The same may be said of the Tripartite Conference — British, Arabs,
Jews — ^which the Government now proceeded (December 1938) to call.
Just as the Government of that time could and would have done what
it did about partition without the gesture of a new commission, so it
could and would have done what it did about nullifying the Balfour
Declaration without the gesture of the St. James Conference of Feb-
ruary-March 1939. The reader must bear the period in mind: in Oc-
tober 1938 the Sudetenland had been handed over to Hitler as a result
of the Munich Conference; in March 1939 Hitler annexed the rest of
Czechoslovakia; and Mr. Chamberlain still believed, or pretended to
believe, that by these concessions he was purchasing ""peace in our
time.” What chance had the Jewish National Home with such a Gov-
ernment, and what likelihood was there that Commissions and Confer-
ences would deflect it from its appeasement course?

Nevertheless the Jews and Arabs were duly invited — ^Jews represent-
ing all sections of opinion, and Arabs representing Palestine and its

401

402

TRIAL AND ERROR

neighbors, Egypt, Iraq, and so on — ^and the Conference was opened
with much solemnity in St. James’s Palace on February 7, 1939. The
dignity of the occasion was somewhat marred by the fact that Mr.
Chamberlain’s address of welcome had to be given twice, once to the
Jews and once to the Arabs, since the latter would not sit with the
former, and even used different entrances to the palace so as to avoid
embarrassing contacts.

The proceedings were usually conducted by Colonial Secretary Mal-
colm MacDonald, supported by a staff of higher ranking officials of the
Foreign and Colonial offices ; they were attended from time to time by
Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax. Toward the end, for reasons which
will appear, they lost any appearance of purpose or intelligibility which
may originally have been imparted to them. I did not attend the closing
session. But during the Conference I exerted myself — ^as indeed I
have always done — to maintain contacts with the most influential figures
in and about the Conference, and with leading personalities generally,
among them Lord Halifax, Prime Minister Chamberlain, Colonial
Secretary Malcolm MacDonald and Winston Churchill.

The atmosphere of utter futility which dominated the Conference was,
of course, part of the general atmosphere of the time. Those were the
days of the Berchtesgaden and Gotesburg ''conferences.” The atmos-
phere was not peculiar to England; the French were as assiduous in
their attendance on Hitler. I remember Leon Blum telling me at that
time: "There is a wild hunger for physical safety which paralyzes the
power of thought. People are ready to buy the illusion of security at
any price, hoping against hope that something will happen to save their
countries from invasion.” My conversations with Halifax, -Chamberlain,
Malcolm MacDonald were vitiated from the outset by this frightful
mood of frustration and panic. They were determined to placate the
Arabs just as they were placating Hitler. That, of course, did not
prevent me from carrying on until the last moment — and after.

My personal relations with Lord Halifax were of the best. I had
made his acquaintance through an old friend, the late Victor Cazalet,
member of Parliament, one of the few members of the House who
never failed to speak up in defense of Zionism, and who did whatever
he could to keep our case before the public eye. He was, in fact, chair-
man of the Parliamentary Pro-Palestine Committee. Through Cazalet’s
willing offices — he was an intimate friend of Halifax — I was able to
meet the latter more frequently and a little more informally than might
otherwise have been the case. The character of some of these private
meetings may be indicated by the two following instances.

Some time before the issuance of the White Paper, when immigration
restrictions were already in force, the desperation of the Jews fleeing
from the coming destruction began to rise to its climax; the efforts to

THE WHITE PAPER 403

reach the safety of Palestine led to the tragic phenomenon of the coffin
boats, as they were called, crowded and unseaworthy vessels which
roamed the Mediterranean in the hope of being able ultimately to dis-
charge their unhappy cargoes of men, women and children in Palestine.
Some sank in the Mediterranean and Black seas. Some reached Pales-
tine either to be turned back or to have their passengers taken off and
interned or transshipped to Mauritius.

One of the worst cases — ^that of the Patria — occurred during the war
under the Colonial Secretaryship of Lord Lloyd; and on hearing of it
I went to him, in despair rather than in hope, to try and persuade him
to give permission for the passengers to be landed. I was met with
the usual arguments about the law being the law, to which I retorted:

law is something which must have a moral basis, so that there is
an inner compelling force for every citizen to obey. But if the majority
of citizens is convinced that the law is merely an infliction, it can only
be enforced at the point of the bayonet against the consent of the
community.'^

My arguments were wasted. Lord Lloyd could not agree with me.
He said so, and added: "1 must tell you that Eve blocked all the ap-
proaches for you. I know you will go to Churchill and try to get him
to overrule me. I have therefore warned the Prime Minister that I
will not consent. So please donff try to get at himP

But it seemed that Lord Lloyd had not blocked the approach to the
Foreign Office, so I went to see Lord Halifax. Here again I had to
rehearse all the arguments about law and ethics and the immorality of
the White Paper which was not really a law but a ukase such as might
have been issued by a Russian Czar or any other autocrat engaged in
the systematic persecution of the Jews. I saw that I was making no
dent in Lord Halifax's determination. Finally I said : ^Took here. Lord
Halifax. I thought that the difference between the Jews and the Chris-
tians is that we Jews are supposed to adhere to the letter of the law,
whereas you Christians are supposed to temper the letter of the law
with a sense of mercy.'’ The words stung him. He got up and said:
‘'All right, Dr. Weizmann, you'd better not continue this conversation.
You will hear from me." To my immense relief and joy I heard the
next day that he had sent a telegram to Palestine to permit the pas-
sengers to land. I met Lord Lloyd soon after, and he said, quite un-
resentfully : “Well you got past me that time. I thought I'd blocked all
the holes, but it seems I’d forgotten Halifax." I was convinced in my
heart of hearts that Lloyd was not displeased to have the incident end
thus.

An interview of quite another kind with Lord Halifax sticks in my
mind. During the Saint James Conference he called me in and addressed
me thus : “There are moments in the lives of men and of groups when

404 TRIAL AND ERROR

expediency takes precedence over principle. I think that such a moment
has arrived now in the life of your movement. Of course I donk know
whether you can or will accept my advice, but it would be desirable
that you make an announcement of the great principles of the Zionist
movement to which you adhere, and at the same time renounce your
rights under the Mandate and under the various instruments deriving
from it.’’

At first I did not quite appreciate the full bearing of this proposal.
I paused for a few moments, then asked: ''Tell me, Lord Halifax,
what good would it do you if I were to agree, which in fact I won’t
and can’t? Suppose, for argument’s sake, I were to make such an
announcement; there could be only one effect, that I would disappear
from the ranks of the Zionist leaders, to be replaced by men much
more extreme and intransigeant than I am, men who have not been
brought up in the tradition I have been privileged to live in for the
last forty years. You would achieve nothing except to provoke the
Zionist movement to yield to its most extremist elements.”

I added: "So much for the movement. And what of myself?” I
briefly recounted to him the history of Sabbathai Zevi, who, in the
seventeenth century, had been a successful leader of the "Return,” who
had gathered round him a mass following from all over the world, and
who stood at the gates of Constantinople, constituting some sort of
menace to the Sultan. The Sultan felt helpless in the presence of this
mystical and dangerous assembly, and sent for his Jewish physician,
who advised him as follows: "Call in this Jewish leader, and tell him
you are prepared to give him Palestine on condition that he embrace
Islam.” Sabbathai Zevi accepted the proposal and became a Moslem,
with the result that his adherents, who counted in the hundreds of
thousands, melted away ; and of his movement nothing remains except
a small group of Turkish Jews who call themselves Dumbies, the
descendants of the few apostates who followed Sabbathai Zevi into
Mohammedanism. I wound up : "You do not expect me. Lord Halifax,
to end my career in the same disgraceful manner.” With that we
parted.

Lord Halifax was strangely ignorant of what was happening to the
Jews of Germany. During the St. James Conference he came up to me
and said: "I have just received a letter from a friend in Germany, who
describes some terrible things perpetrated by the Nazis in a concentra-
tion camp the name of which is not familiar to me,” and when he
began to grope for the name I realized it was Dachau he was talking
about. He said the stories were entirely unbelievable, and if the letter
had not been written by a man in whom he had full confidence he
would not attach the slightest credence to it. For five or six years now
the world had known of the infamous Dachau concentration camp, in

THE WHITE PAPER

405

which thousands of people had been tortured and maimed and done to
death, and the British Foreign Secretary had never heard of the place,
and would not believe that such things could go on ; only the fortuitous
circumstance that he had received the letter from a man in whom he
had “full confidence’^ had arrested his attention. It is difficult to say
whether this profound ignorance was typical for the British ruling class,
but judging from its behavior at that time it either did not know, or
else it did not wish to know because the knowledge was inconvenient,
disturbing, and dangerous. Those were Germany’s “internal affairs,”
and they should not be permitted to interfere with friendly relations
between two Great Powers.

It was astounding to meet this bland surprise and indifference in high
places. When the great burning of the synagogues took place, after the
assassination of Vom Rath in Paris, I said to Anthony Eden: ‘'The fire
from the synagogues may easily spread from there to Westminster Ab-
bey and the other great English cathedrals. If a government is allowed
to destroy a whole community which has committed no crime save that
of being a minority and having its own religion, if such a government,
in the heart of Europe, is not even rebuked, it means the beginning of
anarchy and the destruction of the basis of civilization. The powers
which stand looking on without taking any measures to prevent the
crime will one day be visited by severe punishment.”

I need scarcely add that my words fell on deaf ears. British society
was falling all over itself to attend the elegant parties given by Ribben-
trop in the German Embassy; it was a sign of social distinction to re-
ceive an invitation, and the Jewish blood which stained the hands of the
hosts was ignored though it cried out to heaven. I believe that the Duke
of Devonshire never accepted any of von Ribbentrop’s invitations.

It should be remembered, however, that things were not much better
in France, where the walls were being chalked with the slogan Mieux
vaiit Hitler que Blum, though there the relationship with Germany was
less amiable than in the case of England. Well, they got their Hitler,
and no doubt the taste of it will remain with the French people for a
long time. But whether those who used the slogan so widely have been
cured of their affection for Hitlerism is much to be doubted.

In those days before the war, our protests, when voiced, were re-
garded as provocations ; our very refusal to subscribe to our own death
sentence became a public nuisance, and was taken in bad part. Alter-
nating threats and appeals were addressed to us to acquiesce in the sur-
render of Palestine, On one occasion Lord Halifax said to me: “You
know that we British have always been the friends of the Jews — ^and the
Jews have very few friends in the world today.” I need hardly say that
this sort of argument had on us the opposite effect of what was intended.

That the tide was running heavily against us was obvious from the

4o6 trial and error

beginning of the Conference, but exactly what the Government would
do was not so clear at first. In the early days of the Conference we gave
a party at our house for all the members as well as the representatives
of the Jewish organizations. Lord Halifax, Malcolm MacDonald and
all the high officials accepted. Later the atmosphere was not so cordial.
The debates and conversations meandered along, and the Government
was reluctant to formulate a program. It limited itself to generalities and
bided its time. But the Government had made up its mind. It was only
waiting for the most favorable moment for the announcement of • its
plan.

One day, when the Conference was fairly advanced, we received an
invitation to a lunch to be given by His Majesty’s Government, and we
of course accepted. The lunch was to take place on a Monday. On the
Saturday preceding this Monday I received a letter from the Colonial
Office, addressed to me obviously by a clerical error — it was apparently
meant only for members of the Arab delegation. There, in clear terms,
was the outline of what was afterward to be the White Paper, submitted
for Arab approval ! An Arab State of Palestine in five years ; a limited
Jewish immigration during these five years, and none thereafter without
Arab consent. I could scarcely believe my eyes. We had, indeed, begun
to feel that the discussions had become meaningless for us ; and after
what had happened to Austria and Czechoslovakia nothing should have
surprised us. But to see the actual terms, black on white, already pre-
pared and communicated to the Arabs while ‘‘negotiations’’ were pro-
ceeding, was utterly baffling.

I happened to remember, when I had finished perusing the extraor-
dinary document, that most of my Zionist friends were at a party being
given by Harry Sacher in his home, which was only a few doors from
mine, I went over, and we managed to get Lord Reading and Malcolm
MacDonald to join us. A heated and extremely unpleasant discussion
ensued. We told MacDonald freely what we thought of the document
and asked him to cancel our invitations to the luncheon: We would not
break bread with a Government which could betray us in this manner.
MacDonald was very crestfallen and stammered some ineffective ex-
cuses, falling back always on the argument that the document did not
represent the final view of His Majesty’s Government, that it was only
a basis for discussion, that everything could still be changed, that we
should not take it so tragically — ^the usual twaddle. The meeting lasted a
long time ; its only value, I suppose, was that our delegation was fore-
warned and the British Government clearly informed of the mood and
temper of the Jews. If it was waiting for us to facilitate its publication of
the document it was waiting in vain.

After the outbreak of the war I was to learn how elaborately and how
far in advance the Government had been preparing the White Paper,

THE WHITE PAPER

407

and how meaningless the St. James Conference had been. I was in
Switzerland on a special mission, and called on the British Minister at
Berne, who received me very cordially with the words, ‘^Oh, you’re the
man IVe been wanting to see for quite a time, to get the other side of
the story.” I asked him to explain and he went on: ‘'I was in on the
White Paper. So were most of the Ambassadors and Ministers. Their
opinion of it was asked in advance. Well, you know that most Ambas-
sadors and Ministers take on the color of the countries to which they
are assigned, and the views we presented were all one sided. That is why
I would like to hear your side of the story.” My reply was obvious: '‘It
is too late — and too early — ^for you to listen to the other side. Had you
listened a year ago, the verdict might possibly have been different. Now
we are in the midst of the war, and we are trying for the time being to
forget the White Paper. Perhaps when the war is over you may still be
inclined to listen to the other side.”

The disclosure to us of the Government document which was to be-
come the White Paper coincided roughly with Hitler’s unopposed and
unprotested invasion of Czechoslovakia and the occupation of Prague.
I remember that day well, because Jan Masaryk came to dinner with
us. Between Masaryk and us there was, until the end, a deep friendship,
both on personal and general grounds. There has always been a great
affinity between the Masaryks and Zionism — ^Jan’s father, the founder
and first President of the Czechoslovak Republic had been a strong sup-
porter of the Balfour Declaration — ^and now, in the days of the White
Paper, the representatives of the Czechoslovak Republic were beginning
to be treated by the Great Powers as if they were Jews.

Neither the Jews nor the Czechs will forget the words of Chamber-
lain on the occasion of Hitler’s occupation of the Czech capital. Why
should England risk war for the sake of “a far-away country of vrhich
we know very little and whose language we don’t understand?” Words
which were swallowed down by a docile Parliament many members of
which must have known very well that the Czech Republic was a great
bastion of liberty and democracy, and that its spirit and its institutions
had all the meaning in the w'orld for the Western Powers. It was, apart
from everything else, a colossal insult to a great people. And I remember
reflecting that if this was the way the Czechs were spoken of, what
could we Jews expect from a Government of that kind?

When Jan arrived at our house that evening he was almost unrecog-
nizable. The gaiety and high spirits which we always associated with
him were gone. His face was the color of parchment, and he looked like
an aged and broken man. My wife, my children and I felt deeply for
him — ^perhaps more than anyone else in London — and without saying
too much we tried to make him comfortable. For a while he was silent,
then he turned to us and, pointing to the little dog he had brought with

4o8 trial and error

him, said: ‘That’s all I have left, and believe me, I am ashamed to
look him in the eyes.” Once he had broken the silence he went on talk-
ing, and what he told us was terrible to listen to. He had had a conver-
sation that morning with the Prime Minister, and had taxed him with
the deliberate betrayal of Czechoslovakia. “Mr. Chamberlain sat abso-
lutely unmoved. When I had finished he said: ‘Mr. Masaryk, you
happen to believe in Dr. Benes, I happen to trust Herr Hitler.’ ” There
was nothing left for Masaryk but to get up and leave the room.

A great democratic country, a magnificent army and a superb muni-
tion plant had been delivered to the future conqueror of Europe, and a
people which had fought valiantly for its freedom was betrayed by the
democracies. It was cold comfort to us to reflect that the misfortunes
which had befallen Czechoslovakia were in a way more poignant than
those we faced — at least for the moment. We could not tell what the
future held in store for us ; we only knew that we had little to expect
in the way of sympathy or action from the Western democracies.

However dark the outlook, however immovable the forces arrayed
against us, one had to carry on. We explored the possibility of some
sort of understanding with the Arabs. One or two meetings — ^more or
less unofficial — were arranged between us and some members of the
Arab Delegation. They served no immediate purpose, but they did help
to bring about a kind of relationship. Mr. Aly Maher, the Egyptian
delegate was personally friendly. Some of the Iraqi people were inclined
to discuss matters with us, and not merely to stare at us as the invaders
and prospective destroyers of the Middle East. The most intransigeant
among the non-Palestinian Arabs was the Iraqi Premier, Nuri Said
Pasha. His attitude was stonily negative, but the probable explanation is
illuminating. Iraq is immensely interested in finding an outlet to the
Mediterranean; it would therefore look with favor on a greater Syria
consisting of Iraq, Syria, Trans-Jordan and Palestine. Within the
framework of such a union Iraq would probably concede the Jewish
National Home, with certain limited possibilities of expansion and im-
migration. Opposition, therefore, to a Jewish National Home, had much
more to do with particular Iraqi ambitions than with the rights and
wrongs of the Jews and Arabs; but under the circumstances Nuri Said
Pasha was adamant.

His colleagues, however, were not so firm in their opposition. Neither
did I think the Saudi Arabia delegates entirely inaccessible to reason
on our part. It seemed to me that however discouraging the prospect
was, it ought to be pursued for whatever it was worth. We left London
for Palestine on March 25, and stopped off in Egypt. There Aly Maher,
who had arrived before me, arranged a meeting between me and a num-
ber of leading Egyptians, among them Mahommed Mahmoud, the
Premier, We talked of co-operation between Egypt and the Jews of

THE WHITE PAPER

409

Palestine, in the industrial and cultural field. The Egyptians were ac-
quainted with and impressed by our progress, and suggested that per-
haps in the future they might serve to bridge the gulf between us and
the Arabs of Palestine. They assumed that the White Paper (it was of
course not yet in existence as such) would be adopted by England, but
its effects might be mitigated, perhaps even nullified, if the Jews of
Palestine showed themselves ready to co-operate with Egypt.

There was a ray of encouragement in these talks, especially after the
dismal atmosphere of the St. James Conference. I felt again, as I have so
often before and since, that if the British Government had really applied
itself with energy and good will to the establishment of good relations
between the Jews and the Arabs, much could have been accomplished.
But whenever we discussed the problem with the British they found its
difficulties insuperable. This was not our impression at all. Of course
one had to discount, in these unofficial conversations, both the usual
Oriental politeness and the fact that private utterances are somewhat
less cautious than official ones.

On my brief visit to Palestine in April 1939, I was able to confirm at
first hand what I already knew from reports — ^that the Jews would
never accept the death-sentence contained in the Government proposals.
I wrote to many friends in England, Leopold Amery, Archibald Sin-
clair, Lord Lothian (newly appointed Ambassador to the United
States), Sir Warren Fisher, Lord Halifax, among them, to apprise
them of this fact. I cabled the Prime Minister :

Feel it my solemn duty to warn H.M.G. before irrevocable step
publication their proposals is taken that this will defeat their object
pacification country surrender to demands terrorists will not produce
peace but compel Government use force against Jews intensify hatred
between Jews and Arabs hand over peaceful Arab population to ter-
rorists and drive Jews who have nothing to lose anywhere to counsels
of despair in Palestine. . . . Beg you not underestimate gravity this
warning.

It had been my original intention to stay in Palestine for several
months — ^perhaps until the forthcoming Congress which was to be held
in Geneva that August. I did not believe that anything more could be
done in London at the moment, I was tired out by the physical and
nervous strain of the past few weeks, and I felt that it would be a sort
of rest to resume my work in Palestine. But my friends insisted that I
return to London and make a last-minute effort to convince the Prime
Minister in person of the frightful harm which the publication of the
White Paper would do to us and to the prestige of England. I was con-
vinced that it was useless, and I told my colleagues so. But still they
insisted that the effort be sustained until the last moment.

410 TRIAL AND ERROR

It was not easy for me to leave my wife in Palestine that spring of
1939. She fortunately did have, for company, Lorna Wingate, staying
with us at the house. There was also, as visitor, a young boy of twenty-
two by the name of Michael Clark, a charming youngster who was a
schoolmate and great friend of my younger son, Michael. Michael Clark
had come to Palestine by motorcycle, making his way alone across
Europe and Turkey, over the Balkan and the Taurus mountains. With
these young people staying at the house in Rehovoth I should have felt
more or less easy in mind; but I could not get rid of a feeling of de-
pression when I took my leave. As it turned out, my forebodings were
justified. Young Michael had the habit, in spite of the unrest in the
country, of traveling about alone on his motorcycle. My wife pleaded
with him repeatedly not to expose himself in this reckless fashion, but
he gave no heed to her expostulations. Then one day the poor boy was
shot from ambush by an Arab near the railway line where it passes
through Rehovoth. He was buried in the military cemetery at Ramleh.
I was already in England when this happened, and my wife was so
shaken by the dreadful incident that I cabled her to come to London by
plane. Meanwhile I had the melancholy task of breaking the news to
his mother. I met my wife in Paris, and found her shaken and depressed.
We had both been deeply attached to Michael.

In spite of the hopelessness of the prospect, I again made arrangements
to see Mr. Chamberlain, and again I traveled the via dolorosa to Down-
ing Street. I pleaded once more with the Prime Minister to stay his
hand and not to publish the White Paper. I said : 'That will happen to
us which has happened to Austria and Czechoslovakia. It will over-
whelm a people which is not a state union, but which nevertheless is
playing a great role in the world, and will continue to play one/’ The
Prime Minister of England sat before me like a marble statue; his ex-
pressionless eyes were fixed on me, but he said never a word. He had
received me, I suppose, because he could not possibly refuse to see some-
one who, at my age, had made the exhausting flight from Palestine to
London just to have a few minutes with him. But I got no response.
He was bent on appeasement of the Arabs and nothing could change
his course. What he gained by it is now a matter of history : the Raschid
AH revolt in Iraq, the Mufti’s services to Hitler, the famous "neutral-
ity” of Egypt, the ill-concealed hostility of practically every Arab
country.

Much has been written of Mr. Chamberlain’s infatuation with his
idea of appeasement, and of his imperviousness to anything which might
modify it. I have only one more illustrative incident to add. Some time
before the St. James Conference I happened to receive through secret
channels an extraordinary German document which I was urgently re-
quested to bring to the attention of the Prime Minister. It had been

THE WHITE PAPER

411

prepared and forwarded, at the risk of his life, by Herr Gordler, the
mayor of Leipzig, who shortly before the end of the war was implicated
in the unsuccessful plot to assassinate Hitler, and executed. The docu-
ment was a detailed expose of conditions in Germany, and wound up
with an appeal to Mr. Chamberlain not to be bluffed into further con-
cessions when he went to meet Hitler in Godesburg or Munich.

I showed the document to a friend of mine in the cabinet, and asked
him to get Mr. Chamberlain to read it. He failed. I then went to see Sir
Warren Fisher, one of the heads of the Civil Service, a close friend of
Mr. Chamberlain’s, with a room adjacent to his in Downing Street. I
showed him the document, and explained that undoubtedly Herr Gord-
ler had risked his life several times over to accumulate the information
it contained. Sir Warren Fisher opened his desk and showed me an
exact copy of the document. 'TVe had this,” he said, “for the last ten
days, and I’ve tried and tried again to get Mr. Chamberlain to look at
it. It’s no use.”

The St. James Conference came to its undignified end, the Govern-
ment proceeded with its preparation of the White Paper, and the time
approached for the debate in the House of Commons. We knew that the
vote would go against us, such was the temper of the House, which had
behind it the record of Vienna and Prague. Our appeals to public
opinion were in vain. Shortly after my return from my brief visit to
Palestine, I met Winston Churchill, and he told me he would take part
in the debate, speaking of course against the proposed White Paper. He
suggested that I have lunch with him on the day of the debate. I reported
the appointment to my colleagues. They were full of ideas of what
Churchill ought to say, and each one told me, “Don’t forget this thought,”
and “Don’t forget that thought.” I listened respectfully, but was quite
certain that a speaker of Mr. Churchill’s caliber would have his speech
completely mapped out, and that he would not wish to have anyone come
along with suggestions an hour or so before it was delivered.

There were present at the lunch, besides Mr. Churchill and myself,
Randolph Churchill and Lord Cherwell. I was not mistaken in my as-
sumption. Mr. Churchill was thoroughly prepared. He produced a packet
of small cards and read his speech out to us ; then he asked me if I had
any changes to suggest. I answered that the architecture of the speech
was so perfect that there were only one or two small points I might
want to alter — ^but they were so unimportant that I would not bother
him with. them. As everyone now knows, Mr. Churchill delivered against
the White Paper one of the great speeches of his career. The whole
debate, indeed, went against the Government The most important fig-
ures in the House attacked the White Paper ; and I remember particu-
larly Mr. Herbert Morrison shaking a finger in the direction of Malcolm
MacDonald, and reminding him of the days when he was a Socialist;

412 TRIAL AND ERROR

declaring-, further, that if a Socialist Government should come into
power, it would not consider itself bound by the terms of the White
Paper. This last statement, delivered with much emphasis, was loudly
applauded by the Labor benches.

The Government answer, delivered by Mr. MacDonald, was a clever
piece of sophistry which could carry conviction only to those who were
ignorant of the details of the problem. As for those with whom the ques-
tion of conviction was secondary in that time of panic, nothing that was
said mattered. But it is worth recording that even in that atmosphere
the Government victory was extremely narrow. There were two hundred
sixty-eight votes in favor, one hundred seventy-nine against, with one
hundred ten abstaining. As a rule the Government obtained over four
hundred votes for its measures. As I left the House with my friends I
could not help overhearing the remarks of several Members, to the
effect that the Jews had been given a very raw deal.

One consolation emerged for us in those days : the firmness and una-
nimity of the Jewish delegation. There were represented on it all the
major Jewish communities of the world, and every variety of opinion
from the stalwart and extremist Zionism of Menachem Ussishkin to the
cautious and conciliatory philanthropic outlook of Lords Bearsted and
Reading. At a meeting in the offices of the Zionist Organization the
question was put to the formal vote whether the White Paper could be
considered as forming a basis for discussion. The unanimous decision,
without a single abstention, was in the negative.

CHAPTER 39

War

Mandates Commission Rejects White Paper — Twenty-First
Zionist Congress — We Pledge Co-operation with England in
War — Paradox of Our Position — Paris in the Second World
War — Difference from 1^14 — The Young Men Who Denounced
Chamberlain now Enlist,

An ATMOSPHERE of unreality and irrelevance hung over the
twenty-first Zionist Congress which sat in Geneva from August 16
to ‘August 25, 1939. We met under the shadow of the White Paper,
which threatened the destruction of the National Home, and under the
shadow of a war which threatened the destruction of all human liberties,
perhaps of humanity itself. The difiference between the two threats was
that the first was already in action, while the second only pended; so
that most of our attention was given to the first, and we Strove to as-
sume, at least until the fateful August 22, when the treaty was signed
between Germany and Russia, that the second might yet be averted, or
might be delayed. But on that day, when Hitler was relieved of the
nightmare of having to wage war on two fronts, even the most optimistic
of us gave up hope. The Jewish calamity merged with, was engulfed
by, the world calamity.

The Congress debates pursued their usual course. Every party had
its say, every resolution was fought out in traditional fashion. The rec-
ord was scrutinized and criticized, the administration attacked and de-
fended. But in the lobbies of the Congress, and outside the walls of the
Geneva Theater where it met, knots of delegates discussed the latest
bulletins, and then escaped from the realities by taking refuge within.
We went through all the gestures, but felt that nothing said or done at
such a moment could have meaning for a long time to come.

Of course we rejected the White Paper unanimously. We declared it
illegal ; or, rather, we drew attention to the fact that the Mandates Com-
mission, after examining the White Paper, and after having listened to
Malcolm MacDonald’s defense of it, had declared it illegal, stating ex-
plicitly: “The policy set out in the White Paper is not in accordance
with the interpretation which, in agreement with the Mandatory Power

413

414

TRIAL AND ERROR

and the Council, the Commission has placed upon the Palestine Man-
date/' We took note of the fact that hardly a statesman of standing in
the House of Commons had failed to declare the White Paper a breach
of faith; and we felt that not we, in opposing the White Paper, were
the law-breakers, but the British Government in declaring it to be the
law. Now, with war upon us, the decision of the Mandates Commission
would not for a long time — if ever — come before the Council of the
League. Our protest against the White Paper ran parallel with our
solemn declaration that in the coming world struggle we stood com-
mitted more than any other people in the world to the defense of democ-
racy and therefore to co-operation with England — ^author of the White
Paper. Such was the paradox of our position, a paradox created not by
us, but by England.

After August 22 the Congress hastened its pace, the discussions were
curtailed, the resolutions adopted with greater speed. The Executive
was re-elected, and on the evening of the twenty-fourth, a day before
the closing, I took my leave of the Congress. It was a painful leave-taking
in which personal and general forebodings were mingled, and hopes
expressed that these forebodings might come to naught. I turned to the
Polish delegates in particular, saying : ‘'God grant that your fate be not
that of the Jews in the neighboring land" — ^and all of us felt that this
indeed was the only prayer we could offer up for them. Most of our
Polish friends we never saw again. They perished, with over three mil-
lion other Polish Jews, in the concentration camps and the gas chambers
or in the last desperate uprising of the Warsaw ghetto.

We drove that night toward the Swiss frontier, my wife, Mrs. Blanche
Dugdale and I, in one car, another car with our baggage following. Very
vividly my wife and I recalled how, twenty-five years before, almost to
the day, we had been making our way back to England from Switzer-
land on the outbreak of the First World War. But on that first occasion
the war was already several weeks old, and it had come with incredible
suddenness ; now it was just looming over the horizon, and had been ap-
proaching for years. We found the frontier closed; to our expostulations
that war had not yet been declared, that we were British citizens going
home, that if we had taken the train instead of traveling by car we would
certainly have got through, the gendarme kept repeating : ''On ne passe
plus/^ The illogicality and confusion of war was already upon us. After
endless repetition of the arguments on our side, and of the formula on
the other side, the gendarme sent for his superior officer; we went
through the whole rigmarole again, and were finally permitted to pass
into the neutral zone dividing the province of Savoie from Switzerland.

We spent the night in the charming little summer resort of Divonne
les Bains, which was filled with excited French and British holiday
makers all intent on getting out as fast as possible. Early in the morn-

WAR

415

ing we came to the frontier of the neutral zone — ^and once more the
ritual began. There was no passing — ^until the officer in charge, seeing
that we had an extra car for our baggage, asked us if we would not take
his son along to Paris, where he had to report for mobilization. Of
course we were happy to oblige. How other people got through, I do
not know.

We traveled all day long, avoiding the central artery which was
blocked by tens of thousands of vehicles. We reached Paris in the eve-
ning, and were joined at the hotel by our two sons, who had been in the
south of France, and whom we had wired before leaving Geneva. It is
strange to recall that in those closing days of August 1939, there were
stiU people in high places who believed that war might yet be averted.
M. Reynaud, whom I saw the morning after my arrival, and M. Palev-
ski, his chej de cabinet, a man of great intelligence, did not think the
political situation entirely hopeless. I did not share that view; but I de-
cided nevertheless to risk another couple of days in Paris to see my
friends and acquaintances, and to obtain some sort of picture of the
public state of mind.

The mood was altogether unlike that which I had found in the war
days twenty-five years before. Then, although the Germans had ad-
vanced deep into French territory, and were already at Amiens, Paris
had been in an exalted and confident mood. There was in the air a reli-
gious fervor and an unshakable belief in ultimate victory, however dis-
tant it might be. The young men were gone from the city, which looked
beautiful and sad; many women were already in mourning; but Paris
was proud and confident. Now, although mobilization was in progress,
one sensed neither enthusiasm nor depression; there was only a spirit-
less facing up to an unpleasant fact. There were complaints, of course:
two such wars in one lifetime was too much, ‘'ll jaut en finir^^ was the
cry. Other remarks were heard, sotto voce: “The war isn’t necessary.
. . . Means must be found of coming to terms with the enemy. . . .
Chamberlain’s method is the right one. . . . One has to persevere in it.
. . . There are people enough in the country who know and understand
the regime in Germany, and who can mediate for us. ...” I must con-
fess that though I heard these voices all around me, and very often in
the most unexpected places, I did not appreciate to the full the danger
which they represented. It seemed to me that Reynaud and his Govern-
ment were determined to fight to the end ; and undoubtedly they were ;
but they too do not seem to have appreciated the extent to which the
Fascist evil had eaten into French life and led to the demoralization of
the army.

I came back to England, and that happened in my home which hap-
pened in thousands of others — ^the young generation which had been so
outraged by the policy of the Chamberlain Government forgot its griev-

4i6 trial and error

ances and came to the defense of the country as one man. It might have
been amusing if it had not been so tragic. I remember how, soon after
Munich, a group of young students, mostly from Oxford and Cambridge,
friends of my sons, Benjy and Michael, were gathered in the house in
Addison Crescent, and with what indignation they denounced Chamber-
lain, asserting that on no account would they enlist in the army if the
disgraceful behavior of the government brought on a war by its encour-
agement of Hitler. All of them — ^young scientists, students of medicine
and law — ^were agreed on that point. And all of them enlisted when the
crisis came. Our younger son, Michael, enlisted in the RAF, and was as
eager to get into action as he had been in his denunciation of the Gov-
ernment. Our older son, Benjy, joined an artillery battalion commanded
by my friend Victor Cazalet, and stationed in the south of England.

CHAPTER 40

The First War Years

Gates of Palestine Closed — Our Offers of Help Brushed Aside
— Friendly Talk with Churchill — First Wartime Visit to Amer-
ica — Americans Touclvy Neutrality — First Incredible Rumors
of Planned Extermination of Jews — Talk with Roosevelt —
Benjy and Michael in the Army — War Work Again — Rubber
and High Octane Fuel — Vested Interests — I Propose a Jewish
Palestinian Fighting Force to Churchill — A Story of Frustra-
tion — Second Wartime Visit to America — Mr. Sumner Welles
— State Department and Palestine.

1 HE paradox which was revealed with the opening of the war deep-
ened with the passing of the months. In the fight against the Nazi
monster no one could have had a deeper stake, no one could have been
more fanatically eager to contribute to the common cause, than the
Jews. At the same time England, then the leader of the anti-Nazi coali-
tion, was keeping the gates of Palestine closed against the unhappy
thousands of men, women and children who were making the last des-
perate effort to reach the safety of the National Home. It had been our
hope that when at last there was no longer the ignominious need to ap-
pease Nazis and Arab leaders, there would be a relaxation of the anti-
immigration rulings for Palestine. Nothing of the sort happened. The
coffin boats continued to wander over the Mediterranean, unable to dis-
charge their human cargoes. The pressure within Europe intensified.
And yet we were determined to place all our manpower, all our facilities
in Palestine, at the disposal of England and her Allies. What else was
there for us to do ?

Perhaps the bitterest touch of irony in the situation was the failure
of certain British circles to understand how inevitably. White Paper or
no White Paper, we had to work for the victory of Britain and her
Allies. Either that, or else those sections of the Government would
rather forego the not inconsiderable assistance we could offer than let
the Jews acquire '^credits’' for what they had done during the war!
Often I was offended by unintelligent remarks I heard in British circles
which apparently could not appreciate that a Hitler victory would mean

417

TRIAL AND ERROR

418

the obliteration of the Jewish people, and that this consideration com-
pletely overrode, until Hitler’s defeat, all other considerations.

I took the offer of help which the Congress in Geneva had sent to the
British Government literally and personally. About a month after the
declaration of war I went on a special mission to Switzerland, to try
and find out what substance there was in the rumors that the Germans
had prepared new methods of chemical warfare. I did not obtain much
information, but I did gather the impression that the rumors of tremen-
dous preparations for the destruction of whole cities by gas attacks were
without foundation. I so reported to the Government. Incidentally, this
was the occasion which brought me in contact with the British Minister
at Berne who wanted ‘‘to hear the other side of the story.”

A period of mingled suspense and indecision ensued — ^the period
which was to become known as “the phony war.” A number of people
actually believed that there was going to be no real struggle. I remem-
ber vividly how Hore-Belisha, our War Minister, then on an official
visit to the French Government, made the curious statement, widely
reported in the press : ^^Pour moi la guerre est finie^' (as far as Fm con-
cerned, the war is over). I thought it not only an irresponsibly light-
hearted statement, but one calculated to bring aid and comfort to those
sections of French public opinion which did not want to see a showdown
between Hitlerism and democracy. On the other hand it was, for Hore-
Belisha himself, a prophetic statement. He ceased, soon after, to be War
Minister, and has hardly been heard of since.

In that general atmosphere the impulse to do something constructive
and helpful faced frustration everywhere. I began to think of a trip to
America, the country which, I already felt, would be later the center of
gravity and the center of decision in the world struggle. I had nothing
too specific in mind. It was to be an exploratory trip, for the purpose of
getting my bearings. I was, in a sense, merely laying the groundwork
for later trips.

I had been seeing a good deal of the higher administrative officials
since my return from Switzerland, among them Lord Halifax, the Duke
of Devonshire and Sir Edmund Ironside, of the Imperial General Staff.
We had already discussed the idea of a Jewish fighting force, though
nothing definite was yet suggested. We had also talked of the possibili-
ties in America. When I advised Mr. Churchill, who was back in the
Admiralty — exactly where he had been when the First World War
broke out — ^that I was thinking of going to America, he expressed the
desire to see me, and on December 17, three days before my departure,
I called on him at the Admiralty Office.

I found him not only cordial, but full of optimism about the war. Al-
most his first words after he had greeted me were: “Well, Dr. Weiz-
mann, weVe got them beat !”

THE FIRST WAR YEARS

419

I did not quite think so, and did not say so. I turned the subject,
instead to our own problem, and thanked him for his unceasing interest
in Zionist affairs. I said: “You have stood at the cradle of the enterprise.
I hope you will see it through,’^ Then I added that after the war we
would want to build up a State of three or four million Jews in Palestine.
His answer was : “Yes, indeed, I quite agree with that.''

We talked of certain land legislation, very unfavorable to us, which
was being proposed for Palestine, and of the port of Tel Aviv. Mr.
Churchill asked for a memorandum on these subjects, which were to
come up before the War Cabinet. He also asked that someone be assigned
to keep in touch with him during my absence in America. Gradually
one perceived that his optimism was not that of a man who underrated
the perils confronting England; it was more a long-range confidence
which went with coolness in planning and attention to details. It was
particularly' encouraging to find him, at such a time, mindful of us and
our problems.

The trip to America — ^the first of a series my wife and I made during
the war — ^gave me a glimpse of the disorganization and demoralization
which were setting in in Europe. I planned to go by air via Paris and
Lisbon — ^the latter city had already become the fire escape to the west —
but in Lisbon the transatlantic flights were canceled, and we sat about
for ten wretched days in an atmosphere of international intrigue, spying,
rumors and secrecy. There was no one to speak to, and if there had been
one did not dare to speak. It was an extremely ugly little world.

By the turn of the year some seventy or eighty air passengers for
America had accumulated, and Imperial Airways made arrangements
with the Italian steamship Rex to take us over. The trip was, if any-
thing, more unpleasant than our stay in Lisbon. Italy was not yet at
war, but we were treated practically as enemy nationals. The Italians
were arrogant toward all the English passengers; they were confident
of an early Axis victory and of England's downfall and ruin. The
charges both for the trip and for services on board were exorbitant —
and they refused to take English money I We would have had a doubly
bad time of it if we had not met in Lisbon an old friend of ours, Mr.
Siegfried Kamarsky, a Dutch banker and a good Zionist, for whom,
queerly enough, I had been instrumental in obtaining a Canadian visa a
few months earlier. He and his family traveled with us to America;
they were among the very few Dutch Jews who managed to escape be-
fore Hitler invaded Holland.

We found America in that strange prewar mood which it is now so
difficult to recall. Pearl Harbor was still two years off. America was, so
to speak, violently neutral, and making an extraordinary effort to live
in the ordinary way. One had to be extremely careful of one's utterances.
As I said in one of my addresses : “I am not sure whether mentioning

420

TRIAL AND ERROR

the Ten Commandments will not be considered a statement of policy,
since one of them says: Thou shalt not kiU/' I was frustrated both in
my Jewish and my general work.

On the Jewish side the position recalled prewar England, when men-
tion of the Jewish tragedy was associated with warmongering. It had
been bad enough in the days of the ‘‘cold pogrom,” of concentration
camps, economic strangulation, mass expulsions and humiliation. Now
for the first time rumors began to reach us of plans so hideous as to be
quite incredible — ^plans for the literal mass extermination of the Jews.
I received a letter from an old Zionist friend, Richard Lichtheim, who
lived in Geneva and had good sources of information in Germany, warn-
ing us that if Hitler overran Europe Zionism would lose all its meaning
because no Jews would be left alive. It was like a nightmare which was
all the more oppressive because one had to maintain silence : to speak of
such things in public was “propaganda” !

On the general side there was the same frustration. One did not dare
to say that England’s cause was America’s cause; one did not dare to
speak of the inevitable. One did not dare to discuss even the most ur-
gent practical problems facing England in the life and death struggle.
There was, for instance, rubber, the supply of which from the Far East
had been cut off. I had been interested in the chemistry of rubber substi-
tutes since the time of the First World War. But I found it difficult to
start any sort of practical discussion with American manufacturers.
They were neutral. They were not ready for a great war effort until
Pearl Harbor — ^and even for some time after.

I had a talk with President Roosevelt early in February 1940. He
showed a lively interest in the latest developments in Palestine, and I
tried to sound him out on the likelihood of American interest in a new
departure in Palestine, away from the White Paper, when the war was
over. He showed himself friendly, but the discussion remained theoreti-
cal. Before I left he told me with great gusto the story of Felix Frank-
furter’s visit some time before, to a Palestinian colony where a magnifi-
cent prize bull was on show. Frankfurter asked idly what they called
the bull, and received the answer “Franklin D. Roosevelt!”

I spoke at Zionist meetings in New York, Baltimore, Chicago, Detroit
and Cleveland, always with the utmost caution, seeking to call the at-
tention of my fellow- Jews to the doom hanging over European Jewry
and yet avoiding anything that might be interpreted as propaganda. I
could only stress our positive achievements in Palestine, and express the
hope that the end of the war would bring with it the annulment of the
White Paper and a new era of progress, on a hitherto unprecedented
scale, for the National Home.

All in all, this first American trip, which lasted three months, was
not a satisfactory one. There was, however, one considerable gain to

THE FIRST WAR YEARS 421

record. It was during this visit that I made the closer acquaintance of
two of the younger New England Zionists, Dewey Stone and Harry
Levine, of whose activities I had heard for some time, but with whom I
had had few contacts. Early in 1940 they added, to their general Zionist
work, a special and sustained interest in the Sieff Research Institute,
and later they were to take a leading part in the development of the
Weizmann Institute of Science. They made, and still make, a rather re-
markable team, a sort of Damon and Pythias combination, in their de-
votion to these special projects. Their co-operation is all the more
welcome in that it is guided by a large view and a wide understanding
of the future needs of Palestine. With them worked older friends of the
scientific development of Palestine, such as Lewis Ruskin, of Chicago,
who has been extremely helpful since the time of the founding of the
Sieff Institute, and who continued his support throughout the war years.
Of Albert K. Epstein and Benjamin Harris, also Chicagoans, I have
already spoken in connection with our Rehovoth scientific enterprises.

But, as I have said, the artificial atmosphere of America during that
first period of the war, was an uncomfortable one, and it was a genuine
relief to get back to the realities of England where, if the truth was
harsh, it was at least being faced. The symbol of England’s awakening
to reality was Chamberlain’s retirement and Churchill’s assumption of
office as Prime Minister. The illusions of '*the phony war” were gone;
Europe was being overrun by the Nazis, and England knew that, for a
time at least, she would be standing alone.

Our two boys were in active service. Benjy, the older one, was with
his antiaircraft artillery group on an aerodrome in Kent, in the path
of the invasion. The battalion was often under fire for days at a stretch,
and during such periods the men went without sleep or food or drink for
thirty-six and forty-eight hours at a stretch. Many of them were so shat-
tered by the bombardments that they ran away into the near-by woods,
and had to be collected. After about half a year of service Benjy passed
several months in the hospital, suffering from shell shock. Then he was
invalided out of the service.

Benjy had married, in 1937, Maidie Pomerans, who comes of an ex-
cellent family of Russian Jewish origin living in Leicester, Midlands.
Maidie studied medicine at London University, and it was in London
that they met. Today she practices in the suburbs, running a number of
children’s clinics. She combines with her professional ability exceptional
domestic skill, and maintains a modest but extremely attractive home.
She is a charming hostess, reads widely on general subjects and keeps
abreast of all developments in her own field. Young and lively, she is
loved and respected by all who come in contact with her. Benjy and
Maidie have one child, our grandson, David, a bright spark — ^almost too
intelligent — ^who must constantly be kept back in order that he may not

TRIAL AND ERROR

42s

develop into a so-called prodigy. He does admirably at school, and for-
tunately does as well at games as in his studies, so there is every chance
that he will not develop into the overgrown intellectual type with which
we meet so often in modern Jewish society.

I return to the story of the war years. Our younger son, Michael,
became an officer in the Air Force, and he devoted himself to his duties
heart and soul. He was a physicist by training ; he had taken his tripos
in Cambridge, and engineering at the City and Guilds in London. He
was deeply interested in aeronautics and electronics, and in spite of re-
peated offers from leading physicists at the research stations of the Min-
istry of Aviation to come and work with them, he insisted on active
service. It was his view that one could do research properly only after
a long period of operational flying, and only those who had engaged in
actual warfare knew what combinations of scientific and practical knowl-
edge would bring the best results.

His work consisted of patrol duty in two directions, one southward
across the Bay of Biscay, down to Gibraltar, the other westward almost
as far as Iceland. He was practically always on night service, and when-
ever we went to bed we thought of our son flying somewhere over the
ocean, dodging enemy planes, bringing in ships with food and ammuni-
tion from America to the western approaches of England, always alone,
always in danger.

He came on short leaves from time to time, and his visits were a great
joy and sadness. It seemed that no sooner did he arrive than the twenty-
four or forty-eight hours were over, and we had to part. I always used
to accompany him into the blackout, until he said good-by and disap-
peared into the unknown.

Meanwhile life in England moved into its wartime grimness. The air
attacks on London were intensified until they came with almost mathe-
matical regularity every night. Food became scarce, sleep almost im-
possible, and we reached a stage when we never went down to the shelter
in our hotel — ^the Dorchester — ^but remained fatalistically in our rooms.
Also it seemed to us that if it came to the worst we preferred to die in
our own bed rather than be cooped up in a cellar where, to the danger
of immediate death from explosion, was added the danger of suffocation.
In our rooms we at. least had air and a certain amount of comfort.

Shortly after my return from America I was appointed honorary
chemical adviser to the Ministry of Supply, headed by Mr. Herbert
Morrison, and was given a little laboratory in 25 Grosvenor Crescent
Mews, where I set to work with a small group of chemists. The labora-
tory was not much more than a large matchbox with a great number of
glass windows, and I was always much more apprehensive of the shat-
tering effect of a near-by explosion than of a direct hit. We were not
permitted to work in our laboratory until we had an air-raid shelter
available in the vicinity, and we found one in the back entrance to the

THE FIRST WAR YEARS

423

Alexandra Hotel in Knightsbridge, and thither we used to run when
the alarm was sounded. But the attacks became so frequent that work
proved to be impossible, so we arranged with the air-raid warden to
give us a special whistle only when it looked as though the planes were
coming overhead. Soon, however, he was whistling so often that we
might just as well have listened to the siren; so we threw precaution to
the winds and made up our minds to go on working through the air
raids. Oddly enough, our particular shelter suffered a direct hit during
one of the raids, and fourteen or fifteen people were killed; our lives
were probably saved because we had gone on working. The only time
when we were compelled to suspend work was when a delayed action
bomb fell near the entrance to the laboratory, and the area was cordoned
off until the bomb was removed.

The laboratory was conveniently situated across Hyde Park, a few
minutes walk from the Dorchester Hotel. I found it a great comfort in
this time of personal and general stress to have a serious occupation
which absorbed a great deal of energy and attention, and gave one the
feeling of making some sort of contribution to the national effort.

Early in the war, during my visit to Switzerland, already told of, I
had stopped in Paris and talked with M. de Monzie, then French Min-
ister of Armaments, of the possibility of making use of a certain process
which we had worked out in Palestine at the Sieff Research Institute :
the process is called aromatization, and is a sort of catalytic cracking of
heavy oil leading to good yields of benzine, toluene, and so forth. My
assistant, Dr. Bergmann, scientific director of the Research Institute, was
invited to France by the Ministry of Armaments and set up a pilot plant
for the aromatization of one kilogram of petroleum per hour. The work
was then turned over to two French scientists who proved to be pro-
German and antiwar. Dr. Bergmann returned to Palestine ; not long after
he and Dr. Benjamin Bloch, managing director of the Sieff Institute,
came to London to discuss with me a program of pharmaceutical pro-
duction in Palestine. When I was appointed chemical adviser to the
Ministry of Supply I persuaded Dr. Bergmann to remain with me, and
we worked on our problems together.

The outlines of our war work may be of some interest to the general
reader. Apart from the aromatization process already mentioned, we
investigated the fermentation of molasses by mass inoculation, the fer-
mentation of wood and straw hydrolyzates, and the preparation of
methyl-butinol and its transformation products, especially isoprene. This
last was of interest in view of the approaching rubber crisis. We also
worked on ketones and their use in high octane fuels. It was becoming
obvious that aviation would develop, during the war, to hitherto un-
dreamed of proportions, and there would be a shortage of high octane
aviation fuel.

We soon discovered that our greatest difficulties would lie outside the

424

TRIAL AND ERROR

laboratory. In our efforts to transfer results from the laboratory to mass
production, we ran up against vested interests in the chemical field,
which were strongly opposed to the entry of ‘‘outsiders,” in spite of the
national emergency. I had the support of a number of important people,
among them Lord Mountbatten and^ Geoffrey Lloyd, but things moved
very slowly. In the end it was decided that since the source of heavy
oil was in any case America, our processes should be tried out there
rather than in England. This was the reason for my long visit, from
April 1942 to July 1943, to America.

Absorbed though I was in scientific work, I at no time could forget
the danger which faced the National Home. That the war would spread
to the Mediterranean was a foregone conclusion. In August 1940 I
wrote to Mr. Churchill asking for an interview, and adding:

In a war with the magnitude of the present one, it is impossible to
say what the strategic disposition of the British fleets and armies may
be before victory is attained. Should it come to a temporary withdrawal
from Palestine — a. contingency which we hope will never arise — ^the
Jews of Palestine would be exposed to wholesale massacre at the hands
of the Arabs, encouraged and directed by the Nazis and the Fascists.
This possibility reinforces the demand for our elementary human right
to bear arms, which should not morally be denied to the loyal citizens
'of a country at war. Palestinian Jewry can furnish a force of 50,000
fighting men, all of them in the prime of their strength — no negligible
force if properly trained, armed and led.

In September 1940, I again discussed the matter at some length at a
lunch with Mr. Churchill at which there were also present, among
others, Mr. Brenden Bracken and Mr. Bob Boothby, a close friend. Mr,
Churchill was friendly about the idea, and was interested in the details,
and we worked out there and then a five point program, the outline of
which I had brought with me and which I was to submit immediately
in a memorandum to Lieutenant General Sir John Dill, Chief of the Im-
perial General Staff.

The first point on the program called for “recruitment of the greatest
possible number of Jews in Palestine for the fighting services, to be formed
into Jewish battalions or larger formations.” The third point (I shall
return to the second) called for “officers cadres, sufficient for a Jewish
division in the first instance, to be picked immediately from Jews in
Palestine, and trained in Egypt.” The fourth point dealt with a Jewish
“desert unit,” the fifth with the recruitment of foreign Jews in England.

The second point was ominous for us, if only as an indication of the
difficulties we were to encounter in being permitted to serve. “The Co-
lonial Office insists on an approximate parity in the number of Jews

THE FIRST WAR YEARS 425

and of Arabs recruited for specific Jewish and Arab units in Palestine.
As Jewish recruitment in Palestine is certain to yield much larger num-
bers than Arab, the excess of Jews is to be sent for training to Egypt
or anywhere else in the Middle East.” On this point Mr. Churchill
yielded to the Foreign Office ; on all others he was unreservedly co-op-
erative. I was, on the whole, satisfied with the results ; so were the others
at the luncheon. Spirits were high, Mr. Churchill being in infectiously
good humor. Toward the end of the lunch Mr. Boothby turned to me
with a burst of laughter and said: ^That's the way to handle the P.M.,
Dr. Weizmann, between cheese and coffee!” I answered that I would
make a note of it for future reference.

The military authorities, unfortunately, were not so easy to handle.
Mr. Churchill’s consent to the above program was given in September
1940. Exactly four years were to pass before, in September 1944, the
Jewish Brigade was officially formed! Its history does not form part of
this record, and I will not go into further detail in regard to the negotia-
tions. I believe enough has been said to provide some notion of the frus-
tration we encountered here, as elsewhere, in our ofifers of co-operation.

In the spring of 1941 I broke off my work in London for a three
month trip to America. I went at the request of the British Government,
which was concerned at the extent of anti-British propaganda then rife
in America, but I also gave a good deal of attention to Zionist questions.
It was not easy for me to explain away to Jewish audiences the humiliat-
ing delays in the formation of a Jewish fighting force, the less so, in
fact, as American Jewry, like English and Palestinian Jewry, was
wholeheartedly with England. It was my impression that two-thirds of
the sums collected in the Bundles for Britain campaign came from Jews I

Among the top political leaders in America I found real sympathy for
our Zionist aspirations. I have mentioned my first interview with Mr.
Roosevelt. I saw Mr. Sumner Welles several times during my American
visits. He was well informed and well disposed toward us. The trouble
always began when it came to the experts in the State Department. The
head of the Eastern Division was an avowed anti-Zionist and an out-
spoken pro- Arab, and this naturally affected the attitude of his subordi-
nates and associates. There was a definite cleavage between the White
House and Mr. Sumner Welles on the one hand, and the rest of the
State Department on the other, a situation not unlike the one we faced
in England.

And, again as in England, I was to meet with a certain type of inter-
ested resistance to war work which had nothing to do with the Jewish
question. This developed during my third visit, and I shall speak of it
and of related matters, in the next chapter.

C H AFTER 4 1

America at War

Called to America on Rubber Problem — Michael Missing —
Talk with Churchill — Big Promises — Third Wartime Visit to
America — Science and Politics in America — Critical War Days
— Touch and Go in North Africa — Palestine on Brink of In^
vasion — Zionist Work in America — Hostile Attitude of Near-
Eastern Division of State Department — Impenetrable Intrigues,

Early in 1942 I received a call from Mr. Winant, the American
Ambassador to Great Britain. When we met, he informed me that Pres-
ident Roosevelt had expressed the wish to have me come over to the
United States in order to work there on the problem of synthetic rubber.
Mr. Winant advised me earnestly to devote myself as completely as
possible to chemistry ; he believed that I would thus serve best both the
Allied Powers, and the Zionist cause. I promised Mr. Winant to follow
his advice to the best of my ability. Actually, I divided my time almost
equally between science and Zionism.

My wife and I had arranged to fly to New York on February 13, and
on February 12 we were in Bristol, where we spent the night. Early
the next morning we were already in the car which was to to take us to
the airfield when I was called to the telephone, and our friend Simon
Marks, speaking from London, gave me the terrible news that our son
Michael had been posted missing on the night of the eleventh. I came
slowly down the stairs, completely shattered. My wife only asked: “Is
he killed or missing?'^

To proceed with our journey was utterly impossible. We turned back
to London and I do not remember in all my life a bitterer or more tragic
journey than ours that day from Bristol to London. Throughout all of
it we did not say a word to each other. We were met at the station by
our son Benjy, his wife, Maidie, and our lifetime friend. Lady Marks,
and we proceeded silently to the hotel. There we learned something of
the circumstances surrounding Michaels disappearance. He had come,
down off the coast of France, not far from St. Nazaire, on the night
when the Gneisenau and the Scharnhorst made their dash through the
English Channel. All available planes were engaged in the chase, and

426

AMERICA AT WAR

427

Michaers signals to the station, repeated several times at intervals of
twenty minutes, went unheeded. No plane could be spared to go to his
rescue.

It was only when our friends were gone that the tears at last welled
up in my wife's eyes, and it was a certain relief to see her shaken out
of the stony silence of her grief. Then we talked, and we had the same
thought, and the same hope. Perhaps Michael had come down safely
after all ; perhaps he was even a prisoner in the hands of the Germans,
and we would not learn of it for a long time because he would not give
his real name. Perhaps, then, some day we would hear from him again.
It was a vain hope that pursued us for years, and it died completely
only with the ending of the war.

The last time we spoke with Michael was on the night of February 10,
1942. He was usually quite cheerful when he phoned, but this time he
sounded disconsolate, and I was rather startled by his tone. I tried to
cheer him up, telling him that we would soon win the war, and got
in reply a sad laugh. It still rings in my ears. It seems he had a pre-
monition.

We left for America on March ii, and on the day of our departure I
dropped in at 10 Downing Street to say good-by to Mr. John Martin,
Mr. Churchill's private secretary, with whom we had been on friendly
terms since he had been the able chief secretary of the Peel Commission,
I had already taken farewell of him when he suddenly said : “The P.M.
is in the other room. He has a few minutes' time, and I think I'll bring
you in to him." And then a strange brief colloquy took place — or I
should say monologue, for I hardly did more tlian say good-by to Mr.
Churchill. He, however, packed a great deal into those few minutes
which we passed together, standing on our feet.

He first wished me luck on my American trip, on which he was, of
course, fully informed. “I am glad you are going," he said, “and I am
sure you will find a great deal of work to do there." Then, without any
questioning or prompting on my part, he went on : “I want you to know
that I have a plan, which of course can only be carried into effect when
the war is over. I would like to see Ibn Saud made lord of the Middle
East — ^the boss of the bosses — ^provided he settles with you. It will be
up to you to get the best possible conditions. Of course we shall help
you. Keep this confidential, but you might talk it over with Roosevelt
when you get to America. There's nothing he and I cannot do if we set
our minds on it."

That was all. But it was so much that I was rather dazed by it ; and
the truth is that I would not have taken it all quite literally had it not
been for a rather extraordinary circumstance which had puzzled me for
some time and which only now became meaningful for me. A few months
before I had met with St. John Philby, the famous traveler in Arabia and

428 TRIAL AND ERROR

confidant of Ibn Sand. We had talked about Palestine and Arab rela-
tions, and he had made a statement which I had noted down, but which
had seemed incomprehensible to me coming from him. He had said : ‘'I
believe that only two requirements, perhaps, are necessary to solve your
problem: that Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt should tell Ibn
Saud that they wished to see your program carried through; that is
number one; number two is that they should support his overlordship
of the Arab countries and raise a loan for him to enable him to develop
his territories.'’ I now fitted together St. John Philby’s ''offer” and Mr.
Churchill’s "plan.”

I had been asked by Mr. Churchill to keep the contents of the interview
confidential. I have already said that I dislike these commitments to
secrecy in matters which are of concern to the Zionist movement Under
the peculiar circumstances attending the talk with Mr. Churchill — ^we
were on our way to the train which would take us to the airport — com-
plete secrecy was quite impossible. I had with me at the time Mr. Joseph
Linton, our political secretary and one of the most devoted and faithful
servants of the movement. I told him, when I came out, what had
happened, and said : "I shall be on the plane very soon. I’m going to make
a brief note of this conversation, and you will put it in a sealed envelope
and hand it to our friend, Mr. Sigmund Gestetner. He lives in the
country, and his place is more or less free from bombing dangers. Should
anything happen to me on this journey, or in America, you will open this
envelope and disclose its contents to the Zionist Executive.”

I did not discuss Mr. Churchill’s plan with President Roosevelt on my
arrival in America. Our interview was very brief, in fact little more than
a friendly welcome, America had been in the war just about three
months. At the moment Mr. Roosevelt saw in me only the scientific
worker, and I remembered Mr. Winant’s advice to me — ^to concentrate
as much as I could on war work : I would serve the Zionist cause more
effectively that way.

My first lead was a letter from Mr. Roosevelt to Mr. Vannevar
Bush, then the head of war research. I am afraid that it did not do me
much good, for I soon discovered that if I was going to do effective
work, I would have to play the politician more than the scientist, s
prospect which I found repugnant. The main question was not going tc
be one of process and production, but of overcoming the vested interesti
of great firms — ^particularly the oil firms. I occasionally met witl
extremely unpleasant treatment on the part of some of the representative;
of these firms who were attached as experts to various Governmen
departments.

My proposal, which I made officially to Mr. William Clayton, Unde
Secretary of State for Economics, was to ferment maize — of whicl
millions of bushels were available in the United States and Canada — ^an<

AMERICA AT WAR

429

convert them into butyl alcohol and acetone by my process, which was
established and working on a large scale in various parts of America.
The butyl alcohol could without difficulty be used for the making of
butylene and the butylene easily converted into butadiene, the basis for
rubber. I knew that large quantities of butadiene were already being
made out of oil, but the trouble was, as far as I could gather, that the
butadiene so produced was not pure, and the purification was slow and
costly, whereas the butylene produced by my process was chemically
pure, and would lend itself more easily for conversion into a purer form
of butadiene. But I had come too late, or at any rate very late; the
Government had already engaged the oil companies, and to initiate a
process which had not the approval of the oil companies was almost
too much of a task for any human being.

However, I did have as supporters of my process Mr. Henry A.
Wallace, the Vice-President, and the National Farmers Union. One
result was that I became, to my intense distaste, the center of an argu-
ment which took on a political character; it was the Farmers Union
versus the oil companies. A more welcome result was the ultimate
switching of a good deal of the production to alcohol and its derivatives.
Some time later Mr. Wallace was kind enough to write of my war work
in America in the following terms: '"The world will never know what a
significant contribution Weizmann made toward the success of the
synthetic rubber program at a time when it was badly bogged down and
going too slowly.'^

I have given above only one aspect of the war work in which I was
engaged. It must be borne in mind that butylene is also needed for the
production of high octane fuel. There was, moreover, another aspect
of the rubber problem which was vitally affected, and that had to do with
isoprene. Now whether one produces butadiene from oil or from alcohol
there is no difference in the final character of the rubber, which when
processed is hard, and is best used only for the outside part of the tire,
rather than for the guts or soft inner tubing. I had answered this problem
by another process — ^namely, the condensation of acetone and acetylene.
I produced thereby an isoprene which is polymerized into isoprene
rubber and gives a soft, malleable product which blends well with the
butadiene rubber; so one could use pure butadiene rubber for the hard
outer tube and a combination of the two rubbers for the soft inner
tube.

Here too I must record a long history of delay and opposition. The
Government appointed an important committee to go into the matter.
Originally a member of the Supreme Court was to head the committee,
and Mr. Justice Stone was proposed by the President. Through some
administrative blunder Justice Stone refused the appointment, and Mr.
Bernard Baruch took his place. Two important members of the com-

430

TRIAL AND ERROR

mittee were Professors Compton and Conant Professor Conant was
skeptical from the outset. He said that he too had been trying to synthesize
isoprene from acetylene and acetone, and it seemed to him a tedious and
expensive method. I answered, in some astonishment: '"But you don’t
know what my process is I” I later submitted my findings in an elaborate
report, but did not get much further. Colonel Bradley Dewey, assistant
director of the Rubber Board, did express great interest in our process
when Dr. Bergmann and I and some assistants produced several liters of
S3mthetic isoprene; but when it came to mass production, he could not
see his way to setting up a big plant, although Commercial Solvents, the
firm which had been handling my processes for years, was prepared to go
into it. It was the more puzzling as we had asked for no remuneration
and formulated no demands.

To go ahead with our process we should have had to find a private
firm, which would work without the assistance of the government. This
would have been doubly difficult, because it was not easy to get licenses
and permits for supplies and machinery. The struggle was long and
tiring, but I would not give in. I achieved some partial success, as is
evidenced by Mr. Wallace’s letter: but the vested interests were too
powerful to permit of a quick break-through. In the end I handed over
my processes to a firm in Philadelphia, which began to apply it during
the war, and continues to do so now.

The frustration which I felt during the early part of my third visit to
America was intensified by the increasing sense of urgency connected
with the war generally and with the Mediterranean war in particular.
That summer Rommel was making tremendous strides toward Tobruk
and Egypt and both the military communiques and the newspaper reports
were utterly depressing. One correspondent who had just flown in from
Cairo and Palestine came specially to see me, and told me a shattering
story. The Egyptians were preparing to receive the “conquerors” in
great style. Mussolini was ready to fly over at a moment’s notice, and a
beautiful white charger was to carry him into Cairo, where, like Napoleon,
he would address his armies at the foot of the pyramids. I saw in my
mind’s eye the mountebank posturing in imitation of his great hero, and
the picture was a little revolting.

Equally serious, if without a touch of the grotesque,, was the news
the correspondent brought from Palestine. There, he said, the Arabs were
already preparing for the division of the spoils. Some of them were
going about the streets of Tel Aviv and the colonies marking up the
houses they expected to take over : one Arab, it was reported, had been
killed in a quarrel over the loot assigned to him. The correspondent
further reported that General Wavell had called in some of the Jewish
leaders and told them confidentially how deeply sorry he was that the

AMERICA AT WAR

431

British Army could not do any more for the Yishuv: the troops were
to be withdrawn toward India, the Jews would have to be left behind,
and would be delivered up to the fury of the Germans, the Arabs, and
the Italians, The correspondent had also heard that the Jewish leaders
had held a meeting and made decisions of despair: they were to be
divided into two age groups: the members of the older group would
commit suicide; the younger ones would take to the hills to fight their
last battle there and sell their lives as dearly as possible: thus the
National Home would be liquidated.

There was enough to be heartsick about without taking all this literally,
for what could be the fate of the Jews of Palestine, if Rommel broke
through, after what was happening to the Jewish communities of con-
quered Europe? In those days, when it was touch and go with the
African war, every effort was being made to induce America to send the
maximum number of planes and tanks to that theater. I too added my
plea, for what it was worth. Mr. Henry Morgenthau Jr. introduced me
to General Marshall, and to the American Chief of Staff I explained
what faced us if the needed munitions did not reach the British in time.
General Marshall listened gravely and attentively, said very little, made
notes of what I told him, and thanked me for the information. The story
of how the supplies were rushed across the Atlantic and Africa, of how
they arrived in the nick of time, of how the tide was turned at the last
moment, has been told many times. But perhaps no one remembers
those agonizing days more vividly than the Jews of Palestine, for whom
that near-miraculous rescue of the Homeland from complete annihilation
still has in it a Biblical echo, recalling the far-off story of the destruction
of Sennacherib within sight of the gates of Jerusalem.

For the first few months of my visit I was almost completely absorbed
by my chemical work and its attendant problems. When the summer had
passed, and with it the immediate military danger to Palestine, and when
I had a grip on my war assignment, I permitted myself some Zionist
activity ; not very much, to be sure, for I still bore in mind Mr. Winanf s
advice, but enough to maintain contact with external and internal
developments.

As to the first, I have already mentioned that in my earlier interview
with President Roosevelt we talked only of my scientific work. Later
I began to sound out leading Americans on the kind of support we
could expect for Zionist demands which we would formulate after the
war. But our difficulties were not connected with the first rank states-
men. These had, for by far the greatest part, always understood our
aspirations, and their statements in favor of the Jewish National Home
really constitute a literature. It was always behind the scenes, and on
the lower levels, that we encountered an obstinate, devious and secre-

432 TRIAL AND ERROR

tive opposition which set at nought the public declarations of American
statesmen. And in our efforts to counteract the influence of these behind-
the-scenes forces, we were greatly handicapped because we had no foot-
hold there. The Americans who worked in the Middle East were, with
few exceptions, either connected with the oil companies or attached to
the missions in Beyrouth and Cairo. For one reason or another, then,
they were biased against us. They communicated their bias to American
agents in their territory. Thus it came about that all the information
supplied from the Middle East to the authorities in Washington worked
against us.

Nor could we ever really find out what was happening behind the
scenes. One story will illustrate the queer, obscure tangle of forces
through which we had to find our way. I have told, in another part of
this chapter, how Mr. St. John Philby, the confidential agent of Ibn
Saud, brought us an ^^offer,” which seemed to coincide with the “plan’’
which Mr. Churchill put so hastily before me a few hours before my
departure for America. In America I met a Colonel Hoskins, of the
Eastern Division of the State Department, whom I understood to be
the President’s personal representative in the Middle East. Colonel
Hoskins was not friendly to our cause: on the other hand, he was not
as hostile as his colleagues of the Eastern Division: in fact he was, by
comparison, rather reasonable. In his opinion, something could be done
in Palestine if the Jews would, as he called it, “moderate their demands.”
He spoke of bringing half a million Jews into Palestine in the course
of the next twenty years, quite a “concession” for one who was opposed
to Zionism.

Colonel Hoskins left for the Middle East, and when I saw him on his
return his tone was very different. He said he had visited Ibn Saud,
who had spoken of me in the angriest and most contemptuous manner,
asserting that I had tried to bribe him with twenty million pounds to
sell out Palestine to the Jews. I was quite staggered by this interpreta-
tion put on a proposal which I had never made, but a form of which
had in fact been made to me by Ibn Saud’s representative — St. John
Philby. Mr. Hoskins reported further that Ibn Saud would never again
permit Mr. Philby to cross the frontiers of his kingdom. Some time
later I told St. John Philby of Colonel Hoskins’ report. Philby dis-
missed it as “bloody nonsense.” The truth was that the relations between
Philby and Ibn Saud had never been better, and these relations, I might
add, remain unchanged as I write this.

What was one, what is one, to make of all this ? Did Ibn Saud deliber-
ately misrepresent his position to Hoskins? Or had he said something
which could be interpreted as a complete reversal of his previous
position? And to whom else besides myself did Hoskins give this
account of the conversation with Ibn Saud? And what effect did it

AMERICA AT WAR 433

have in the State Department? How was one to get at the truth — if
there was a truth?

Nothing came of the “plan/’ as we know today: what prospect of
realization it at one time had it is hard to say. Of further negotiations,
and of other conversations with President Roosevelt and Mr.. Churchill
I shall speak in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 42

Peace and Disillusionment

High Hopes and Deep Disappointment — Roosevelfs Affirma-
tive Attitude on Palestine — British Labor Party's Repeated
Promises — Friendly Reassurances jrom Churchill — All Come
to Nothing — Moyne Assassination — My First Visit to Pales-
tine since jpjp — Vast Changes — Frustrations — The Terror —
British Labor Comes to Power — Repudiates Its Palestine
Promises — Bevin's Attitude — Earl Harrison^ s Report and
President Truman* s Recommendation — The Anglo-American
Commission — The First Postwar Zionist Congress,

During the latter years of the war two themes were dominant in
the minds of the Jewish people, one of despair and one of hope. The
tragedy of European Jewry was revealed to us slowly in all its incredible
starkness. It was not only a tragedy of physical suffering and destruc-
tion, so common throughout the world though nowhere so intensively
visited as upon the Jews. It was a tragedy of humiliation and betrayal.
Much of the calamity was unavoidable ; but a great part of it could have
been mitigated, many thousands of lives could have been saved, both
in the period preceding the war, and during the war itself, had the
democratic countries and their governments been sufficiently concerned.
This is recalled not in a spirit of recrimination ; the tragedy is too deep
for that. It is recalled in order that the Jewish position may be under-
stood. As in all tragedies, the feeling that had people cared it might
have been different made the anguish less bearable.

The hope which was the counterpart of this despair and anguish was
born of the impending defeat of Nazi Germany and of the belief that
now, at last, with the coming of peace, the victorious democratic world
would bethink itself; less preoccupied with its fears and insecurities, it
would realize what had happened to the Jewish people, and give it its
chance, at last.

The period immediately following the war was, for the Jewish people
and the Zionist movement, one of intense disappointment. True, ours
was not the only disillusionment; but there were few demands as well

434

PEACE AND DISILLUSIONMENT

435

founded as ours, and fewer still which represented so bare a minimum
of sheer need. All that we asked for was simply the opportunity to save,
by our own efforts, the remnant of our people. This was the sum total
of our hopes.

It cannot be made too clear that our hopes were not merely general,
and based only on the prevailing mood of optimism. They were based
equally on specific private and public assurances. Their disappointment
was all the more shocking and unexpected because they had been de-
liberately nurtured by those who could have fulfilled them, promised
to do so, and did not. On this the record is painfully clear.

I had taken with me to America, when I went there in 1942, the
assurance of Mr. Churchill that he had a “plan” for us, that together
with Mr. Roosevelt he could carry out the plan, and that the end of
the war would see a change in the status of the Jewish National Home;
The White Paper, which Mr. Churchill had so bitterly denounced in
1939, would go. Toward the end of my stay in America — 3. stay almost
entirely devoted, as the reader may remember, to war work — I had a
long interview with President Roosevelt, in the presence of Mr. Sumner
Welles. The attitude of Mr. Roosevelt was completely affirmative.

He was of course aware of the Arab problem, and spoke in particular
of Ibn Saud, whom he considered fanatical and difficult. I maintained
the thesis that we could not rest our case on the consent of the Arabs ;
as long as their consent was asked they would naturally refuse it, but
once they knew that Mr. Churchill and Mr. Roosevelt both supported
the Jewish National Home, they would acquiesce. The moment they
sensed a flaw in this support they would become negative, arrogant,
and destructive. Mr. Roosevelt again assured me of his sympathies, and
of his desire to settle the problem.

Throughout this interview I was supported by Mr. Welles, who had
been somewhat cautious and reticent in our private conversations, but
on this occasion was outspoken in his desire to concretize my proposals.
Mr. Welles expressed the belief that America would be prepared to
help financially in the setting up of the Jewish National Home. We did
not go into details, but Mr. Welles had read my article in Foreign
Affairs, in which I had outlined my views, and he was in agreement
with them. Mr. Roosevelt, to whom I repeated the substance of Mr.
Churchilhs last statement to me, asked me to convey to the latter his
positive reaction.

It must not be supposed that our negotiations were confined to groups,
parties and individuals in power, and that the encouragement of our
hopes flowed from these alone. Our appeal for justice was not a party
matter, and we addressed ourselves to all men of good will. Since the
Jewish Agency was a recognized public instrument in the administration
of Palestine, we were naturally in more frequent contact with the British

436 TRIAL AND ERROR

Government ; but my colleagues and I were constantly pressing our case
in other circles. In 1943 and 1944 I discussed the question of the Jewish
National Home with men like Archibald Sinclair, Creech-Jones, Ernest
Bevin, Hugh Dalton. Mr. Berl Locker, one of the outstanding labor
leaders of the Zionist movement, was active in British Labor circles. At
the Conference of June 1943, the British Labor party reaffirmed its
traditional support of the Jewish National Home. In the report of the
Labor Party National Executive Committee, issued in April 1944,
measures were recommended which in respect of the Arabs went beyond
our own official program.

The report read in part : 'There is surely neither hope nor meaning
in a Jewish National Home unless we are prepared to let the Jews, if
they wish, enter this tiny land in such numbers as to become a majority.
There was a strong case for this before the war, and there is an irre-
sistible case for it now, after the unspeakable atrocities of the cold-
blooded, calculated German-Nazi plans to kill all the Jews of Europe. . . .
Let the Arabs be encouraged to move out as the Jews move in. Let them
be compensated handsomely for their land, and their settlement else-
where be carefully organized and generously financed."'

I remember that my labor Zionist friends were, like myself, greatly
concerned about this proposal. We had never contemplated the removal
of the Arabs, and the British laborites, in their pro-Zionist enthusiasm,
went far beyond our intentions.

Again, I received friendly assurances from Mr. Churchill at a brief
meeting in September 1943 ; and yet again, in greater detail, at Chequers,
where I lunched with him and a small party, including his brother John
Churchill, Mr. John Martin and Major Thompson, on November 4,
1944. Mr. Churchill was very specific in this last conversation.

He spoke of partition, and declared himself in favor of including the
Negev in the Jewish territory. And while he made it clear that no active
steps would be taken until the war with Germany was over, he was in
close touch with America on the matter of the Jewish National Home.
Hearing that I was going to Palestine shortly, he recommended that I
stop off in Cairo, and see Lord Moyne who, he said, had changed and
developed in the past two years. He asked me whether it was our in-
tention to bring large numbers of Jews into Palestine. I replied that we
had in mind something like one hundred thousand a year for about
fifteen years. I spoke also of the large numbers of children who would
have to be brought to Palestine ; Mr. Churchill commented that it would
be for the governments to worry about the children, and mentioned
financial aid. I answered that if the political field were clear, the financial
problem would become of secondary importance.

At one turn the conversation touched on oppositionist Jews, and Mr.
Churchill mentioned Mr. Bernard Baruch, among others. I said there
were still a few rich and powerful Jews who were against the idea of

PEACE AND DISILLUSIONMENT 437

the Jewish National Home, but they did not know very much about the
subject.

I asked myself at the time, as I have often done, why men who had
given so little attention to an intricate problem like Zionism should take
it upon themselves to speak disparagingly on the subject to men in high
places, on whom so much depended. I had seen Mr. Baruch several
times in America, in connection with my chemical work. Knowing his
attitude, I had taken great care not to touch on the Jewish problem; nor
had he shown any disposition to question me on it. Yet he had under-
taken to state his negative views to Mr. Qiurchill. But I ought to add
that later on, and especially during the period of the struggle for parti-
tion in the UN, Mr. Baruch changed a great deal ; he was helpful to us
in many respects, and used his influence freely in our favor.

When the lunch was over, Mr. Churchill took me into his study and
repeated the points he had made in the general conversation. He seemed
worried that' America was more or less academic in its attitude on the
question. He also added that he did not have a very high opinion of the
role the Arabs had played in the war.

It was, on the whole, a long and most friendly conversation; it was
also one of the rare occasions when Mr. Churchill did not do practically
all of the talking. I left the meeting greatly encouraged, and shortly after
gave a detailed report of it to my colleagues.

So much for the background of our hopes during the closing period of
the war, I turn now, briefly, to part of the personal record.

I had not been in Palestine since the spring of 1939, in the hectic days
preceding the issuance of the White Paper. During the early war years
I had oscillated between England and America, occupied by Zionist and
scientific duties. All this time my wife and I had hankered after the
country, and after our home in Rehovoth, which we had managed to
build after such long planning and which we had occupied so little. As
my seventieth birthday approached, in the autumn of 1944, we made up
our minds that we would spend it nowhere but in Palestine. The war
was still on, but its outcome was clear. We felt we had earned a respite.
America beckoned again; there were warm and pressing invitations to
come there, and promises of great rewards in the shape of funds for the
Jewish institutions. We did not accept. We needed a rest, and the place
for it was our own home.

The journey began under an ominous cloud. On November 6 (1944),
two days after my interview with Mr. Churchill, and five days before we
set out. Lord Moyne was assassinated in Cairo. I wrote the next day to
the Prime Minister :

I can hardly find words adequate to express the de^ moral indigna-
tion and horror which I feel at the murder of Lord Moyne. I know that
these feelings are shared by Jewry throughout the world. Whether or

TRIAL AND ERROR

438

not the criminals prove to be Palestinian Jews, their act illumines the
abyss to which terrorism leads. Political crimes of this kind are an
especial abomination in that they make it possible to implicate whole
communities in the guilt of a few. I can assure you that Palestine Jewry
will, as its representative bodies have declared, go to the utmost limit of
its power to cut out, root and branch, this evil from its midst.

There is not a single word in this letter which I have ever wanted to
retract, even in the days of our bitterest disappointment. I shall have
more to say of this utterly un-Jewish phenomenon. Here I only wish to
observe that the harm done our cause by the assassination of Lord
Moyne, and by the whole terror — ^this apart from the profound moral
deterioration involved — ^was not in changing the intentions of the British
Government, but rather in providing our enemies with a convenient
excuse, and in helping to justify their course before the bar of public
opinion.

The reception accorded me by the Jews of Palestine after my absence
of more than five years was warm, generous, and spontaneous. It was a
wonderful home-coming, all that the heart could wish; or rather, it
would have been if there had not been certain phenomena which caused
me grave concern. Since 1939 the Homeland had undergone great
changes; and once at least, when Rommel stood at Alamein, it had
passed through the valley of the shadow of death. There had been mo-
ments when a frightful premonition of ultimate disaster had haunted us,
and we had had nightmares of the Germans and Italians marching into
Palestine, and our cities and colonies, the tenderly nurtured achieve-
ments of two generations, given over to the same pillage and destruction
as German and Polish Jewry. It had not happened, and the Homeland
had come through, stronger than ever. The war years had knit the
community into a powerful, self-conscious organism, and the great war
effort, out of all proportion to the numerical strength of the Yishuv, had
given the Jews of Palestine a heightened self-reliance, a justified sense
of merit and achievement, a renewed claim on the democratic world,
and a high degree of technical development. The productive capacity of
the country had been given a powerful forward thrust. The National
Home was in fact here — unrecognized, and by that lack of recognition
frustrated in the fulfillment of its task. Here were over six hundred
thousand Jews capable of a vast concerted action in behalf of the rem-
nant of Jewry in Europe — ^to them no impersonal element but, in thou-
sands of instances, composed of near and dear ones — capable of such
action, frantically eager to undertake it, and forbidden to do so.

Side by side with these developments, in some ways linked with them,
and in part arisirjg from the bitter frustration of legitimate hopes, there
were the negative features I have referred to : here and there a relaxation

PEACE AND DISILLUSIONMENT

439

of the old, traditional Zionist purity of ethics, a touch of militarization,
and a weakness for its trappings ; here and there, something worse — ^the
tragic, futile, un- Jewish resort to terrorism, a perversion of the purely
defensive function of Haganah; and worst of all, in certain circles, a
readiness to compound with the evil, to play politics with it, to condemn
and not to condemn it, to treat it not as the thing it was, namely, an
unmitigated curse to the National Home, but as a phenomenon which
might have its advantages.

Sometimes it seemed as though the enemies of the Jewish Homeland
without were determined to encourage only the destructive elements
within. Long before the end of the war the last excuse for the White
Paper — pacification of the Arabs, who incidentally were not pacified by
it — ^had disappeared. By 1944, and even by 1943, the victory which the
Arabs had done so little to help us obtain was in sight. The moral
authority of the democracies was then supreme, and a declaration for
the Jewish Homeland then would have had irresistible force. A new
excuse replaced the old one : one had to wait for the^ end of the war. This
was the pretext advanced me in private conversation by Mr. Churchill,
and offered by him to the House of Commons on February 27, 1945,
after the Yalta Conference. The European war ended in May, 1945;
no action was taken.

In July of that year came the General Election in England, with a
Labor triumph which astonished the whole world and delighted all
liberal elements. If ever a political party had gone unequivocally on
record with regard to a problem, it was the British Labor party with
regard to the Jewish National Home; within three months of taking
office, the British Labor Government repudiated the pledge so often and
clearly — even vehemently — repeated to the Jewish people. Today it is
clear from the course of events that the promises and protestations of
friendship, the attacks on the White Paper in the House of Commons,
by those who were to form future governments, the official resolutions
of the British Labor party, lacked character and substance ; they did not
stand up to the pressure of those forces which, behind the scenes, have
always worked against us.

It was on November 13, 1945, that the Labor Government officially
repudiated the promises of the Labor party and offered us, instead of
the abrogation of the White Paper, and relief for the Jews in the deten-
tion camps — a new Commission of Inquiry. The extraordinary spirit in
which this declaration of policy was conceived may be understood from
the opening. The British Government ‘'would not accept the view that
the Jews should be driven out of Europe or that they should not be
permitted to live again in these countries without discrimination, con-
tributing their ability and talent toward rebuilding the prosperity of
Europe.” The British Government, in other words, refused to accept

440

TRIAL AND ERROR

the view that six million Jews had been done to death in Europe by
various scientific mass methods, and that European anti-Semitism was as
viciously alive as ever. The British Government wanted the Jews to stay
on and contribute their talents (as I afterward told the United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine) toward the rebuilding of Germany, so
that the Germans might have another chance of destroying the last
remnants of the Jewish people.

With such an exordium, the rest of the document can easily be guessed
at. Instead of the mass movement of Jews into Palestine which the
British Labor party had repeatedly promised, there was an offer of a
trickle of fifteen hundred refugees a month; instead of the generous
recognition of the original purposes of the Balfour Declaration, a rever-
sion to the old, shifty double emphasis on the obligation toward the
Arabs of Palestine as having equal weight with the promise of the
Homeland to the Jews. The letdown was complete.

Mr. Bevin, who, as the new Foreign Secretary, issued the declaration
of policy on behalf of the Labor Government, was apparently determined
to make it clear that, at any rate as far as he was concerned, no doubts
should be entertained anywhere as to his personal agreement with the
worst implications of the declaration. At a press conference following
the issue of the declaration he said, apparently apropos of our demand
for the fulfillment of the Balfour Declaration and the promises of the
Labor party : 'Tf the Jews, with all their suffering, want to get too much
at the head of the queue, you have the danger of another anti-Semitic
reaction through it all.^’

I thought the remark gratuitously brutal, even coarse, but I cannot
say that it surprised me. My personal contacts with Mr. Bevin have
been unfortunate: that is, where Jewish matters have been concerned.
His tone was hectoring. I first went to see him, in his capacity as
Foreign Secretary, with regard to certificates for refugees. We had been
offered a ludicrously small number — a remnant, it was stated, unused
under the White Paper — ^which we could not offer the unhappy, clamor-
ing inmates of the DP camps without a feeling of shame. We refused the
certificates. Mr. Bevin’s opening remarks to me were: ''What do you
mean by refusing certificates? Are you trying to force my hand? If you
want a fight you can have it!'' There was not the slightest effort to
understand our point of view ; there was only an overbearing, quarrel-
some approach. An earlier contact with Mr. Bevin, when he had been
Minister of Labor during the war, had been somewhat happier; but
then Mr. Bevin had wanted my services.

Thus, in the two and a half years which followed my visit of 1944 to
Palestine, no positive response came from British or world statesman-
ship to the pleas and protests of the great constructive majority of Jewish
Palestine and the Diaspora. Every objective study of the immediate and

PEACE AND DISILLUSIONMENT 441

long-range problem of European Jewry pointed to one solution: mass
evacuation, as fast as economic absorption would permit, into Palestine.
Every objective report on Palestine confirmed the claim of Palestinian
Jewry, that it was capable of handling the problem. But nothing was
done.

In the autumn of 1945 Mr. Earl Harrison, after personal investiga-
tion on the spot, reported to President Truman that there was no solu-
tion for the problem of the majority of European Jews other than Pales-
tine; President Truman then suggested to Prime Minister Attlee that
one hundred thousand Jews be admitted immediately to Palestine; and
President Truman’s suggestion was followed by Mr. Bevin’s declaration
above referred to. This was the origin of the Anglo-American Com-
mission of 1946.

Profoundly disappointed though we were, for we had had our fill of
inquiries and investigations, we co-operated loyally with the commission.
Its personnel was of high caliber, and included a number of excellent
men like Bartley Crum, of California, Frank Buxton, of Boston, Richard
Crossman, of England, James G. Macdonald, of New York, and Judge
Hutchison of Texas.

With these and others I established friendly relations, and did what I
could to place the facts before them. But though the commission held
sessions in America and in Europe before it proceeded to Palestine, I
would not appear before it except in the latter country. I considered
that the proper setting, and I wanted the members of the commission
to see the Homeland with their own eyes first. I pleaded then once more
for the radical solution of the Jewish problem — the evacuation to
Palestine of the remnant of European Jewry; and on the basis of our
achievements, which they could survey for themselves, and of careful
reports prepared by our experts, I submitted practical plans. The com-
mission was favorably impressed; it issued positive though cautious
recommendations, among them the admission of the one hundred thou-
sand ‘'displaced persons,” as suggested by President Truman. It pro-
duced no effect, except to prove that the British Government had never
intended to take affirmative action. The whole device had been nothing
but a stall. The White Paper remained in force, our immigration was
still limited to the tragically derisory figure of fifteen hundred a month.

The frustration of our creative impulses in Palestine, with all its
demoralizing effects, had its repercussions on the Zionist movement
everywhere. The ravages which the war had wrought on the Jewish
people, and the political betrayal which had followed the war, were
mirrored in our first postwar Zionist Conference, held in London in
August 1945, at the time of the British General Election. It is true
that the Labor Government had not yet reversed the decision of the
Labor Party; but the Government of Mr. Churchill, in which places

442

TRIAL AND ERROR

of leadership were held by men who had denounced the White Paper
in 1939, had already failed us; and the effect, added to the calamities
of the war, was to depress the tone of the movement, and to encourage
counsels of despair. Even more marked, of course, was the effect by
the end of 1946, when the first postwar Zionist Congress was held in
Geneva. Since this second gathering was the larger, the more official,
and the more elaborately prepared, it will suffice to deal with that alone.

It was a dreadful experience to stand before that assembly and to run
one’s eye along row after row of delegates, finding among them hardly
one of the friendly faces which had adorned past Congresses. Polish
Jewry was missing; Central and Southeast European Jewry was miss-
ing ; German Jewry was missing. The two main groups represented were
the Palestinians and the Americans ; between them sat the representatives
of the fragments of European Jewry, together with some small delega-
tions from England, the Dominions, and South America.

The American group, led by Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, was from the
outset the strongest, not so much because of enlarged numbers, or by
virtue of the inherent strength of the delegates, but because of the weak-
ness of the rest. The twenty-second Congress therefore had a special
character, differing in at least one respect from previous Congresses:
The absence — among very many delegates — of faith, or even hope, in
the British Government, and a tendency to rely on methods never known
or encouraged among Zionists before the war.

These methods were referred to by different names: "'resistance,”
"defense,” "activism.” But whatever shades of meaning may have been
expressed by these terms — and the distinctions were by no means clear
— one feature was common to all of them : the conviction of the need for
fighting against British authority in Palestine — or an3rwhere else, for
that matter. My stand on these matters was well known; I made it
clear once more at the Congress. I stated my belief that our justified
protest against our frustrations, against the injustices we had suffered,
could have been made with dignity and force, yet without truckling to
the demoralizing forces in the movement. I became, therefore, as in the
past, the scapegoat for the sins of the British Government ; and knowing
that their "assault” on the British Government was ineffective, the
"activists,” or whatever they would call themselves, turned their shafts
on me. About half of the American delegation, led by Rabbi Silver, and
part of the Palestinian, led by Mr. Ben Gurion, had made up their minds
that I was to go. On the surface it was not a personal matter ; the debate
hinged on whether we should or should not send delegates to the Con-
ferences on Palestine, which were to be resumed in London toward the
end of January 1947, at the instance of the British Government. By a
tiny majority, it was decided not to send delegates — and this was taken

PEACE AND DISILLUSIONMENT 44 ^

as the moral equivalent of a vote of no confidence in me. What happened
in the end was that my election as President having been made impos-
sible — ^no President was elected — ^the delegates went to London by a
back door.

I left the Congress depressed, far more by the spirit in which it had
been conducted than by the rebuff I had received. Perhaps it was in the
nature of things that the Congress should be what it was ; for not only
were the old giants of the movement gone — Shmarya Levin and Us-
sishkin and Bialik, among others — ^but the in-between generation had
been simply wiped out; the great fountains of European Jewry had been
dried up. We seemed to be standing at the nadir of our fortunes.

In the early spring of 1947 we returned to Palestine and settled again
in our home in Rehovoth. Here I busied myself with scientific work,
with the building of the new scientific institute which was founded for
my seventieth birthday — as described in the next chapter — ^and with
the dictation of most of these memoirs. The United Nations Special
Committee on Palestine, and the deliberations of the United Nations on
the Palestine problem at Lake Success, were still to come.

CHAPTER 43

Science and Zionism .

Oil and World Politics — The Need to Break Oil's Monopo-
listic Position — Possibilities of Fermentation Industries —
Other Enterprises — Palestine's Possible Role — Work Done at
Rehovoth — The Daniel Sieff Research Institute — Scientific
Pioneering in Palestine — Special Problems — Our Role in the
War — The Weismann Institute of Science,

"T* HE reader of these memoirs has long been aware in- what an organic
fashion my Zionist and scientific interests have been interwoven from
my earliest years. This is not, I believe, a purely personal phenomenon.
It is, rather, the reflection of an objective historic condition. The ques-
tion of oil, for instance, which hovers over the Zionist problem, as it
does, indeed, over the entire world problem, is a scientific one. It is part
of the general question of raw materials, which has been a preoccupation
with me for decades, both as a scientist and a Zionist ; and it had always
been my view that Palestine could be made a center of the new scientific
development which would get the world past the conflict arising from
the monopolistic position of oil. Not that our scientific work would be
dedicated solely to that purpose; but it would certainly be one of its
main enterprises.

During my last and longest war visit to America the struggle between
oil and other interests had again been made abundantly manifest. The
same problem, in other forms, confronted England. I referred, in the
last chapter, to a friendly meeting with Mr. Ernest Bevin — one in which
he sought my services. It occurred in the midst of the war, when the
British Government sent out to West Africa a small commission to
investigate the short- and long-range possibilities of new sources of raw
material, with fuel chiefly in view. Walter Elliot and Creech -Jones were
on the commission, and I had several subsequent meetings with them.

I suggested that they try to determine whether various types of
starches could not be grown easily in West Africa. It is known that
Central or tropical Africa produces a great many root starches, like
manioc and tapioca; also cane sugar. I was of the opinion that if one
could grow abundant supplies of these commodities, one could introduce

444

SCIENCE AND ZIONISM

445

a fermentation industry into that part of the world, with a large yield of
ordinary alcohol, both for power and for the production of butyl alcohol
and acetone. These three materials, in large quantities and at a low
price, could form the basis of two or three great industries, among them
high octane fuel, and would make the British Empire independent of
oil wells.

The commission went out for a survey, and so far nothing has come
of it. I am still of the opinion that the plan is feasible. Its most attractive
feature is, perhaps, that it is not tied to a geographic point, like an oil
supply, but is applicable wherever the substances I have mentioned can
be grown. It is, moreover, part of what I believe to be a necessary and
probably inevitable shift in a great sector of modern industry. Butyl
alcohol, acetone, and ethyl alcohol are the bases of many products besides
fuel and plastics. The acetylene chemistry derivatives start with methyl
butinol, which is itself prepared from acetylene and acetone. Methyl
alcohol is made from carbon dioxide and hydrogen, which are yielded
as by-products from the fermentation of butyl alcohol ; the methyl alcohol
can easily be reconverted into formaldehyde, one of the best disinfectants.
It is, moreover, widely used in synthetic chemistry. Methyl-butinol,
again, leads to the formation of certain amino alcohols, which are most
valuable constituents of dyestuffs.

It is on these lines that my collaborators and I have been working
for a number of years. The program is still in its initial stages, and to
elaborate it would require quite a number of chemists and a certain
amount of time; but enough has been done — in Philadelphia, London,
and Rehovoth — ^to indicate the lines of research on which we should
move at present.

Another piece of work which has been occupying our attention for
the last few years leads to the production of cheap but digestible and
valuable nutritive products. It may be briefly described as the attempt
to upgrade materials which are used as cattle food, converting them into
human food. The materials are peanuts or peanut cake — after the oil has
been extracted — soya beans and similar substances. This product has
been tested in many hospitals as nutrition for patients, and for people
with ulcerated stomachs, and it has proved very beneficial. It is, more-
over, cheaply produced, and is within reach of the poorest populations,
such as the coolies of India or China.^It is entirely of a vegetable nature,
is highly nutritive, and without containing a particle of meat has a meaty
taste. It should be of particular benefit to those eastern countries in
which meat is either too expensive or is prohibited for religious reasons.

This enterprise was worked out in its technical aspect by ^a group of
capable workers in America, and has already produced results. My
colleagues and I have been occupied with the chemical side since 1935?

446 TRIAL AND ERROR

aided at the beginning by Willstatter, who was a great authority on the
chemistry of proteins.

A third branch of research has occupied my attention in recent years,
and in this Dr. David Bergmann and one or two others have participated
to a considerable degree. In its early stages it was carried out at the
Sieff Institute, later it was transferred to London. It is a process for
converting the crude residues obtained after the distillation of oil into
aromatic substances like benzine, toluene, xylene, naphthalene and certain
gaseous substances like butylene, isobutylene, and so on. Our purpose
was to create reserves of toluene, for we remembered our sad experiences
in the last war, when we ran out of toluene, the basis of TNT. The
process proved, however, to have wider value. It was taken up by a
private firm to which the Manchester Oil Refinery belongs ; a company
was formed with a capital of two million pounds, the government par-
ticipating to tlie extent of 5^ cent in view of the national importance
of the process.

The ideas set forth in brief outline in the foregoing pages were
germinating in my mind for many years. I followed closely the literature
on the subject, and discussed it with scientists, particularly with^ Haber
and Willstatter, whenever I could. It was my idea, as I have said, that
Palestine might be one place where work of that kind might be initiated.
Although it is not a country rich in the necessary raw materials, it is
sufficiently near to Africa to enable one to survey the field without too
much difficulty. It also has the advantage of standing on the borderline
of two great zones, the tropical and the temperate, so that the climatic
conditions are especially favorable.

Within Palestine, Rehovoth seemed to me the right place for a begin-
ning. It was the seat of the Agricultural Experimental Station; we
would have on the premises the botanists and plant physiologists who
were already well acquainted with the country. There remained the
question of means — and of getting together a group of scientists.

With regard to the first, I approached my friends of the Sieff and
Marks family, and asked them if they would not be prepared to build
such an institute as I had in mind as a memorial to young Daniel Sieff,
who died prematurely, and had been very much interested in scientific
problems. They responded at once. With regard to the second, the reader
will recall how, in the early Hitler years in Germany, large numbers
of first-rate scientists were driven from the German universities. Some
of them, like Dr. David Bergmann, his brother Felix, and other chemists
of distinction, joined our group. With these, and with my old colleague
Mr. Harold Davies, with whom I have now been working for over
thirty-five years, we began the work. This has been an especially in-
teresting, instructive and, I believe, valuable chapter in the history of
the Jewish National Home.

SCIENCE AND ZIONISM

447

The whole experiment of setting up a research institute in a country
as scientifically backward as Palestine is beset with pitfalls. There is,
first, the risk of falling into the somewhat neglectful habits of Oriental
countries ; a second danger is that of losing a sense of proportion because
of the lack of standards of comparison. One is always the best chemist
in Egypt or in Palestine when there are no others. Also, if one turns out
a piece of work which in America or England would be considered
modest enough, one is apt to overevaluate it simply because it has been
turned out in difficult circumstances. The standard and quality of the
work must be watched over most critically and carefully. Many of the
publications issued by scientific institutions in backward countries are
very much below the level required elsewhere, but the contributors to
these publications are very proud of them simply because the local level
is not high. I made up my mind that this sort of atmosphere should not
prevail in the Sieff Institute, and that it should live up to the highest
standards.

There were several ways of combatting the dangers I have indicated.
First there was the proper selection of the staff, and the infusion into it
of the right spirit — ^that of maintaining the highest quality. Every
member was enjoined to take his time over his piece of work, and not
merely have publication in view.

Second, it became our policy to keep the workers in the institute in
touch with what was being done in Europe and America, not merely
by providing a good library, where they could read of the researches
of others in scientific journals, but by arranging personal contacts. We
made it a rule to invite scientists from other institutes to come and lecture
in Rehovoth, spending a few weeks in the laboratories, sharing their
experiences with us, and criticizing the efforts of the young research
workers. In the years preceding the war we had visits from Professors
Henri of Paris, Errera of Brussels, Wurmser of Paris and others of
their standing. Unfortunately the war interrupted this practice, which
we are trying to renew at present, and already professors Louis Fieser
of Harvard, and Dr. Ernst Chain of Oxford, Herman Mark of the Brook-
lyn Polytechnic Institute, among others, have visited the institute since
the end of the war.

We also worked in the reverse direction, sending our workers abroad,
to the universities. Out of eleven senior workers four have been out in
Paris, Ottawa, New York, Chicago, and Berkeley. As one returns,
another leaves, and so continuous contact is maintained with the great
scientific world.

The building and organization of the Sieff Institute was, even for
Palestine, a unique case of pioneering. Apart from the psychological
difficulties of maintaining a high standard, there was the physical diffi-
culty of scientific organization. When, during the war, we undertook to
manufacture certain drugs which till then had been a monopoly of the

448 TRIAL AND ERROR

Germans, we lacked both apparatus and i“aw material. The former we
had to improvise, the latter to manufacture for ourselves. We got a small
quantity of raw material from the Middle East supply center at Cairo,
but always with great difficulty. It is almost impossible to develop a
pharmaceutical industry unless one has at hand all the necessary raw
materials. Pharmaceutical products of a certain complexity are so to
speak the crown of the industry, the last stage of several chemical
processes. Each of these requires the greatest care, because of the high
standards of purity necessary in the end product. We could always handle
the last stages, but without a great organic and inorganic chemical
industry behind us, the early stages presented enormous difficulty. Thus,
for instance, there was — and still is — a lack of sulphuric acid, without
which almost nothing can be done. There is no local production of
benzine or aniline or similar products. All these had to be obtained at
very high prices — when they were obtainable — from sources which were
not always ready to encourage the creation of a chemical industry in
Palestine.

There were problems of another kind. When the institute was built,
on the premises of the experimental station, it looked at first as if we
were going to sink in a sea of sand. The buildings of the station were
quite neat, as far as their external appearance was concerned, but there
was not a tree or a blade of grass to adorn the vast courtyard in
which the two institutions were housed, and I had before my eyes the
green lawns of English and American universities and scientific acad-
emies, and thought that we would be showing a lamentable lack of
aesthetic feeling if we merely planked down the buildings and did nothing
with the surroundings.

I therefore set about building roads to connect one part of the
institution with another, to plant trees and lay out lawns, and in general
to indicate through externals that this was an agricultural station. Colors,
flowers and creepers began to appear very soon, for we have plenty of
water, and the soil is light and easily responds to good treatment. After
two or three years of care, the whole was transformed into a garden
which delights the eye, and every visitor and worker feels the effect.

There are certain human trifles which are of great importance. The
people who came to visit us, brought here by their chauffeurs, did not
show what I considered the proper respect for a public building. They
had to be taught not to litter the place with cigarette and cigar ends,
pieces of paper and other refuse. At first the injunctions against this
practice met with a skeptical shrug of the shoulders, especially on the
part of the critical chauffeurs. There were many ironical remarks at
my insistence on tidiness ; but soon it became known that such people
would not be allowed to enter the premises; by now every chauffeur
in Palestine knows that the Sieff Institute is one place in Palestine

SCIENCE AND ZIONISM

449

where one does not throw cigarette ends on the floor, but in the
receptacles provided for that purpose.

A particular feature in the life of the Institute was the erection of a
little club. We are outside the settlement of Rehovoth, and it would
take time for the workers to go home for their midday meals; in the
heat of the summer it w^ould also mean quite an effort. We organized the
club for the purpose of supplying cheap and wholesome meals. It is
also a place where the workers can rest, read newspapers,, hold meetings
and arrange lectures and musical evenings. When I mentioned the idea
of the club to Professor Willstatter, he said : '1 hope you will set it up.
Believe me, it is more important than one or two more laboratories.”

The Sieff Institute has gradually won a good name for itself, both
in the scientific and Jewish world, during the thirteen years of its
existence. I believe we have done good practical work. The pharma-
ceutical company which we created during the war has turned over its
experience and good will to a serious concern which will continue the
manufacture and distribution of its products. In this way an industry
requiring much skill and care has been created, and will carry on, I
hope, with increasing effectiveness. Other problems which we have
tackled have also led to practical results. I feel that on the whole the
standard of our publications is high, and our papers have always been
accepted in the best journals of England and America. The name of
Rehovoth is familiar to every research chemist in these countries, and
we receive quite a few applications from scientists who wish to come
and work with us.

The Sieff Institute has proved to be only a beginning. On the occasion
of my seventieth birthday a group of my American friends conceived
a more ambitious project — ^a scientific center which would embrace not
only organic chemistry, but physical chemistry and other branches on
a much larger and more important scale. Those who had been active
for the Sieff Institute in years past, Dewey Stone and Harry Levine
of New England, Albert K. Epstein, Benjamin Hands and Lewis
Ruskin of Chicago, were joined by new forces, like Edmund I. Kauf-
niann of Washington, who became President of the American Committee,
and Sam Zacks, President of the Zionist Organization of Canada. Under
the energetic guidance of my friend Meyer W. Weisgal, this larger
project moved forward very rapidly, so that on the third of June, 1946,
the cornerstone of the main building of the new institute could be laid.
There were present at the ceremony, among others, Professors Fieser
of Harvard, David Rittenberg and Chaim Pekeris of Columbia Uni-
versity, Herman Mark, Kurt G, Stern and Peter Hohenstein, of the
Brooklyn Pol 3 d:echnic Institute, and Dr. Yehudah Quastel, F.R.S., of
University College, Cardiff. Several of these eminent scientists have
agreed to accept permanent posts at the Institute, which is to bear the

450 TRIAL AND ERROR

name of the Weizmann Institute of Science, as soon as research can
be begun.

There was not a little in that ceremony of the summer of 1946 to
remind us of that earlier ceremony, in the summer of 1918, when the
cornerstone of the Hebrew University was laid. True, we were no longer
in the midst of a general war, and the Jewish National Home to which
we were dedicating the new enterprise was substantially in existence.
But it was a time of stress and difficulty, when men’s minds were little
occupied with this type of activity. It was the time of the ‘^terror,” a
time of bitter political disappointment and of impending struggle. Like
the laying of the cornerstone of the University on Mount Scopus, this
was an act of faith : and it has been a continuous act of faith to carry the
work forward.

By the summer of 1947 the central building was completed, and it is
now — in the fall of 1947 — ^being supplied with first-class modern equip-
ment. I think this will be not only an institution of great practical
usefulness, but also a source of pride and satisfaction to all of us.

It is gratifying, too, that the new Institute has not remained the
^^hobby” of a small coterie. In various parts of the world increasing
numbers of farsighted individuals are evincing a sustained and creative
interest in the enterprise. In Palestine, burdened as it is with enormous
and pressing material problems, substantial contributions have been made
to the Institute. In England, the Marks-Sieff family, the original
sponsors of the Sieff Institute, now seconded by my friend, Sigmund
Gestetner, are the center of an active group. In the United States the
friends of the Institute are too numerous to list here ; but I cannot refrain
from mentioning the Philadelphia group, headed by Fredric R. Mann,
Walter Annenberg, Simon Neuman, and Judge Louis I. Levinthal, as
well as a few individuals scattered throughout the country, like Harold
Goldenberg, of Minneapolis, Paul Uhlmann, of Kansas City, William
S. Paley, Abraham Feinberg and Rudolf Sonneborn, of New York,
Charles Rosenbloom, of Pittsburgh, and my old friend, Samuel Zemurray,
of New Orleans.

I have spoken, in an early chapter, of the frightful spiritual and
intellectual losses we have suffered in the last war. The creation of
scientific institutions in Palestine is essential if we are to insure the
intellectual survival of the Jewish people. It may take us as much as
fifty years to regain our strength in this field, and the only hope is that
the men of high qualification who come to us will influence the young
generation of Palestine in the direction of skill, discipline, order, and
high quality performance.

These men will no doubt bring with them their own scientific problems.
Many of them are engaged in modern physical, chemical, electronic and
isotope researches, and no doubt will continue this work in the new

SCIENCE AND ZIONISM

451

institute, which will be equipped accordingly. But it will be the business
of those charged with the guidance of the institute not merely to imitate
work which is going on in other places, perhaps with superior effective-
ness, but to concentrate on problems which are peculiarly Middle East-
ern or Palestinian, like genetics, the introduction of new varieties of
plants and fibers, and the exploitation of certain resources in the country
which at present may not represent any considerable values but which if
properly worked can become of great interest. These are matters which
will have to be carefully examined when the scientists are assembled,
and when they have discussed and distributed their tasks. It is a fas-
cinating problem to the tackling of which I look forward with great
eagerness, even though, personally, I can only listen and chime in
occasionally, for owing both to my age and eyesight disability I cannot
take part in the actual performance.

We must leave it to time to determine the actual lines of development.
All that one can do at present is make the preparations as adequate as
one can. The initiative of the scientists will make maximum use of the
conditions which they will find in the new country, and I have no doubt
that their devotion and skill will lead them into the solving of many
problems connected with the future growth of the Homeland.

CHAPTER 44

The Decision

England Refers the Palestine Problem to the UN — The Special
Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) — Restatement of My
Views — The Significance of the Terror — The British Work
against Us in the UN — Oil Interests and the Political Stability
of the Near East — Decision Approaches in UN — Helping
Hands — Henry Morgenthau, Jr. — President Truman and the
Negev — The UN Declares a Jewish State.

XhE final phase in the struggle for the establishment of the Jewish
State may be said to have begun with Britain’s decision in the spring of
1947 to refer the whole problem of Palestine to the United Nations.
By that time the Anglo-American Commission, and the London Confer-
ence of January 1947, had been revealed as delaying devices. The
same spirit motivated, I believe, the resort to the UN. It was not in Mr.
Bevin’s plans that the UN should express itself in favor of the creation
of a Jewish State, which it did, by more than the requisite two-thirds
majority, in its historic decision of November 29, 1947.

The first action of the UN was the creation of the United Nations
Special Committee on Palestine, the UNSCOP, which proceeded to that
country in the summer of 1947 to study the problem on the spot. Its
recommendation of partition, the subsequent deliberations of the United
Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Palestine at Lake Success, in October
and November, and the decision of the Assembly, are recent history. A
brief account of my part in these events will bring my life record to a
close.

I appeared before the UNSCOP in Jerusalem at the request of the
Vaad Leumi, or Jewish National Council, and before the Ad Hoc Com-
mittee at Lake Success at the request of the Jewish Agency. The official
spokesmen of the latter body were Dr. Abba Hillel Silver and Mr.
Moshe Shertok. I was no longer President of the Zionist Organization
and Jewish Agency. I felt, nevertheless, that I spoke the mind of the
overwhelming majority of Jews everywhere, and that I could, without
immodesty, after more than half a century of activity, claim to speak for
the spirit of the Zionist movement. The account which follows is not in

452

THE DECISION

453

strict chronological order; its chief purpose is to summarize the sub-
stance of my views on the Zionist situation as a whole.

It was, as I said before the Ad Hoc Committee at Lake Success, a
moving experience for me to appear before the United Nations at this
turning point in Jewish history, and I added: “My mind goes back
something like twenty-five years to the time when, in the Council Cham-
ber of the League of Nations, a somewhat similar discussion took place,
and as a result of it there was the emergence of our program for the
reconstitution of the Jewish National Home in Palestine/' But my mind
went back much further, I sought to restate, before the two committees,
the fundamentals of the movement, its ethical and national meaning, and
its historical character, as well as its position in regard to immediate
problems. I went back not only a quarter of a century, but half a cen-
tury and more. I presented to the best of my ability, a total picture of the
meaning of Zionism.

Much of what I had to say to the committees the reader will have
gathered from my life story. If I advert briefly to some points which are
already familiar to the reader, it is because even the most immediate
of our problems must be viewed against that background.

The environment I was born into, and grew up in as a child, the
upbringing which I received, made Jewishness — the Jewish nation,
nationalism, as others term it — an organic part of my being. I was never
anything but Jewish, I could not conceive that a Jew could be anything
else. It was very strange for me to hear Mr. Jamal Husseini, speaking
for the Arab side at Lake Success, declare that Jews were not Jews at
all; they were Khazars, or Tartars, or God knows what. I answered,
simply: “I feel like a Jew and I have suffered like a Jew."

“To feel like a Jew" meant for me, as for all of those who have had
that upbringing, to be a Zionist, and to express in the Zionist movement
the ethical as well as the national spirit of our Jewishness. All this was
already implicit in the early Chibath Zion movement, when the Russian
Jewish masses were stirring under the promptings of Pinsker and Achad
Ha-am. The coming of Herzl was an event of enormous importance, but
not an unnatural one. It was no revolution ; it was a fulfillment. But, as
I have said, his creation of the Zionist Organization meant much more
for us than his writing of the Judenstaat. It was not necessary to supply
us with theories of Zionism ; we had always had them. What we needed
was a means and a way.

And that was what the Zionist Organization became for us. We
watched it growing in strength from Congress to Congress. Sometimes
we were compelled to fight certain destructive and reactionary forces
which intruded into it. It seemed to me that these forces were seeking
to increase the membership of the Zionist Organization at any cost, and
were ready, for the sake of temporary assistance, to barter away the

TRIAL AND ERROR

454

purity of its basic principles. The pressure of need has always spurred
certain elements among the Jews to accept what I have so frequently
called the fallacy of the short cut ; and sometimes the results have been
deeply disturbing. What was the terror in Palestine but the old evil in
new and horrible guise? I said before the UNSCOP in Jerusalem: ^The
White Paper released certain phenomena in Jewish life which are un-
Jewish, which are contrary to Jewish ethics, Jewish tradition. 'Thou
shalt not kill’ has been ingrained in us since Mount Sinai. It was incon-
ceivable ten years ago that the Jews should break this commandment.
Unfortunately they are breaking it today, and nobody deplores it more
than the vast majority of the Jews. I hang my head in shame when I
have to speak of this fact before you.”

In this case, as in all others, a deviation from fundamental principle
is not only a denial of ethics ; it is self-defeating in its purpose. I have
never believed that the Messiah would come to the sound of high ex-
plosives. The dissident groups which sprang up in Palestine, and which
terrorized the government and to some extent the Jews, and kept up an
unbearable tension in the country, represented to my notion a grave
danger for the whole future of the Jewish State in Palestine.

I permit myself a digression at this point. What I said before the
UNSCOP and the Ad Hoc Committee about the organic character of
Zionism, and my detestation of the terror, was necessarily a brief sum-
mary of my views on those subjects. I believe that they should be
treated at somewhat greater length here. There is a tendency to say
that it was the activities of the Irgun which largely succeeded in draw-
ing the attention of the world to the Palestine problem and in bringing
it before the international forum of the United Nations. How the world
was affected by the terror in Palestine it is difficult to gauge. We re-
ceived more publicity than Herostratus, and I do not think that it is
desirable to attract attention in that form.

I have said that the terrorist groups in Palestine represented a grave
danger to the whole future of the Jewish State. Actually their behavior
has been next door to anarchy. The analogy which is usually drawn
between these groups and what happened in Ireland or South Africa
presents only a half-truth. It leaves out of account that one fundamental
fact with which the Jews have to reckon primarily: namely, that they
have many hostages all over the world. And although Palestine is the
primary consideration, it must not, it has no right to, endanger the
situation of Jews outside of Palestine. Apart from which it must be
remembered that after all the building of Palestine will depend to a large
extent on the good will of Jews outside.

To return now to my addresses before the United Nations Commit-
tees. I dwelt at some length on our relations to the Arabs. I reiterated
my belief — ^which I still hold strongly in spite of all that has happened —

THE DECISION

455

that co-operation with the Arabs would come about only if we enjoyed
a status equal to theirs. This, the reader may remember, was one of the
important reasons which moved me to accept partition when the Peel
Report first mooted the idea a decade ago. I continued to advocate it
when '^prudent’^ Zionists either treated the suggestion with great caution,
or gained an easy popularity by attacking it. I pleaded for partition at
the meetings of the UNSCOP in Jerusalem when no one could foresee
that this would be its recommendation by an overwhelming majority.
It seemed to me then — a great many others see it now — ^that the creation
of a Jewish State, even within diminished boundaries, was the only way
out of the impasse, particularly in our relations with our Arab neighbors.

It is also the only way to begin restoring those relations between
ourselves and Great Britain which have deteriorated so sadly since the
time of the Balfour Declaration. Even in the tense days of the summer
and autumn of 1947 I was compelled by the feeling of historic justice to
declare, both before the UNSCOP and the Ad Hoc Committee, that the
Jewish people would be eternally grateful to Great Britain for the in-
auguration of that policy which the Balfour Declaration embodied. We
must not, I insisted, permit ourselves to be blinded to the fact that the
Mandate was inspired by high purposes, worthy of all the exertions and
sacrifice which the Jewish people could bring to its implementation.

I said it at a time when the British Government, and its representa-
tives in Palestine, were doing their best to turn the decision of the
UNSCOP and the Ad Hoc Committee against us; at a time, I might
say, when they were resurrecting arguments which had long since been
disproved. I was, for instance, particularly struck by the complaint of the
Palestine administration, in a document prepared for the United Nations
Special Committee, that our achievements had ‘'set up disparities’^
between us and the Arabs. Once upon a time we were accused of harm-
ing the Arabs by displacing them from the land, or by creating unem-
ployment in their midst. This form of the accusation had been thrown
out of court by the Peel Commission; the Palestine administration now
revived it in another form. We were not harming the Arabs directly; it
might even be conceded that we were bringing them benefits ; but there
were “disparities.”

I contended, I think rightly, that these disparities were much smaller
than those which exist between the backward population and the so-
called master race in many civilized and powerful countries. One might
very well ask these rich and powerful countries what they have done for
their backward populations. In my opinion it falls far behind the bene-
fits which the Arabs have derived from the Jewish population of Pales-
tine. If more should have been done for the Arabs — and it should —
that was the primary business of the Government, and not of the Jews.

But the so-called question of these “disparities” opened up a much

TRIAL AND ERROR

456

wider field of discussion. The stability of the Near East has long occupied
the attention of statesmen; there is a general fear that a political or
social collapse in the Arab subcontinent will have grave consequences
outside of that area. But the most notorious social feature of the Arab
subcontinent is the shocking gap between the small layer of the over-
rich and the vast base of the submerged and miserable population. Nor
is anything of consequence being done, by those who profess to fear the
consequences of this evil, to diminish its dangers. Where are the vast
royalties from the oil fields going? What fraction of these sums which
are being handed over to Arab potentates is applied to bettering the
condition of the masses of the population ? Only a minimal proportion is
actually being used for the founding of schools, or the improvement of
hygienic conditions.

One was sometimes driven to the painful conclusion that there was an
unwritten covenant between certain elements among the European and
Anglo-Saxon powers, and the middle eastern Arabs, which ran on
something like the following lines: ‘‘We are adherents of noninter-
vention. Whatever happens in the interior of your country is your busi-
ness. You can go on dealing with your populations as you think fit. We
want peace in order to tap the oil resources and keep the lines of com-
munication open.^’ But once again so-called “realism’^ defeats itself.
These elements are the very ones who fear unrest in the Near East.
They refuse to understand that this idyllic state of affairs cannot last
very long under any circumstances; and therefore they dread the ex-
ample and influence of the Jewish Homeland. Instead of applauding this
example and influence, which has already in Palestine produced a con-
siderable improvement in the condition of adjacent Arab communities,
they wish to see it removed; they consider the Jews dangerous not
because they exploit the fellaheen, but because they do not exploit them.
They have not learned, perhaps in their anxiety for immediate profit they
are unable to learn, that stability is not to be obtained by the dominion
of the few over the many, but by the more even spread of wealth through
all the levels of the population.

This, in brief, was the substance of some of the arguments which I
submitted to the UNSCOP and the Ad Hoc Committee. But there was
much to be done in the way of explanation and exposition apart from
my public appearances. Both in Palestine and America I placed myself
at the disposal of members of the committees, or of United Nations
delegates, who were anxious for more detailed information. My activities
were, so to speak, on the sidelines, rather than in bearing the brunt of
the public political discussions. In Palestine my house was open at all
times to members of the committee. In America I was in frequent attend-
ance at the sessions. If things were going slowly during the rather
feverish days preceding November 29, 1947, if unexpected difficulties

THE DECISION

457

arose, I was asked to come down to see some group of delegates — the
French, the Bolivian, the American and so on.

The official pleading of our cause before the United Nations was con-
ducted with great skill and energy by Mr. Moshe Shertok, the head of the
Political Department of the Jewish Agency for Palestine, and Dr. Abba
Hillel Silver, the head of the American Section of the Jewish Agency,
but many American Jews who until recently were remote from the
Zionist movement took a keen interest in the United Nations discussion
and helped us in the work. There was a welcome and striking change in
the attitude of the American Jewish Committee, under the leadership of
Judge Joseph M. Proskauer. Mr. Bernard Baruch and Mr. Herbert
Bayard Swope, particularly the latter, who visited me frequently, were
helpful among the various delegations. Among the younger men there
were George Backer and Edward M. Warburg, of whom the latter had
inherited from his father a deep interest in Jewish affairs, and has come
very close to the Zionist ideology. Of particular assistance was Mr. Henry
Morgenthau Jr., with whom I had been privileged to come in contact
some years before, when he was a member of the Roosevelt administra-
tion. This contact continued after he left the Cabinet and was strength-
ened when he became chairman of the United Jewish Appeal — a respon-
sibility which he took very seriously, like ever3ffhing else to which he
devotes his attention. All these names, and many others which could be
added, make up an astonishing demonstration of the unity of American
Jewry with regard to the Jewish National Home; it is in reality a ful-
fillment of what I had striven for in my old plans for the Jewish Agency.

There were many tense moments preceding the final decision on
November 29, and these had to do not only with the probable votes of
the delegates. There was, for instance, the actual territorial division.
When this was discussed some of the American delegates felt that the
Jews were getting too large a slice of Palestine, and that the Arabs
might legitimately raise objections. It was proposed to cut out from the
proposed Jewish State a considerable part of the Negev, taking Akaba
away from us. Ever since the time of the Balfour Declaration I had
attached great value to Akaba and the region about it. I had circum-
navigated the gulf of Akaba as far back as 1918, when I went to see the
Emir Feisal, and I had a notion of the character of the country. At pres-
ent it looks a forbidding desert, and the scene of desolation masks the
importance of the region. But with a little imagination it becomes quite
clear that Akaba is the gate to the Indian Ocean, and constitutes a
much shorter route from Palestine to the Far East than via Port Said
and the Suez Canal.

, I was somewhat alarmed when I learned, in the second week of
November, that the American delegation, in its desire to find a com-
promise which would be more acceptable to the Arabs, advocated the

458 TRIAL AND ERROR

excision of tlie southern part of the Negev, including Akaba. After con-
sultation -vvith members of the Jewish Agency Executive, I decided to go
to Washington to see President Truman and to put the whole case
before him.

On the morning of Wednesday, November 19, I was received by the
President with the utmost cordiality. I spoke first of the Negev as a
whole, which I believe is destined to become an important part of the
Jewish State. The northern part, running from Gaza to Asluj or Beer-
sheba, is beautiful country. It needs water, of course, which can either be
brought from the North, as projected in the Lowdermilk scheme, or
provided locally by desalting the brackish water which is found in
abundance in these parts. We are, in fact, busily engaged in our Rehovoth
Institute in experiments on the second alternative, and have succeeded
in producing drinking water at an economic price ; the question of larger
quantities for irrigation still needs study. The settlements which are
already ^receiving water from a pipe line are showing remarkable results.
Mr. Heur^ A. Wallace, who had recently returned from a visit to the
Negev, w^as struck by a great plantation of carrots, which had been pre-
ceded on the same soil by a good crop of potatoes, while near by there
■was a plantation of bananas. All this seems fantastic when one takes into
account that there has not been a blade of grass in this part of the
world for thousands of years. But it is, as I told the President, in line
with whiat the Jews have done in many other parts of Palestine.

I then spoke of Akaba. I pleaded that if there was to be a division of
the Negev, it ought to be vertical and not horizontal ; this would be
eminently lair, giving both sides part of the fertile soil and part of the
desert. IBut for us it was imperative that in this division Akaba should
go to thie J ewish State. Akaba is at present a useless bay ; it needs to be
dredged, deepened and made into a waterway capable of accommodating
ships of sizable dimensions. If Akaba were taken away from us, it would
always remain a desert, or at any rate for a very long time to come. As
part of the Jewish State it will very quickly become an object of developr
ment, and would make a real contribution to trade and commerce by
opening up a new route. One can foresee the day when a canal will be
cut from some part of the eastern Mediterranean coast to Akaba. It is not
an easy undertaking, but it has already been adurqbra^gd by American
and Swedish engineers. This would become a paralfel highway to the
Suez Canal, and could shorten the route from Europe to India by a day
or moire.

I pleaded further with the President that if the Egyptians choose to
be hostile to the Jewish State, which I hope will not be the case, they can
close navigation to us through the Suez Canal when this becomes their
property, as it will in a few years. The Iraqis, too, can make it diffi-
cult for us to pass through the Persian Gulf. Thus we might be cut off

THE DECISION

459

entirely from the Orient. We could meet such an eventuality by building
our own canal from Haifa or Tel Aviv to Akaba. The project has a great
many attractive possibilities ; and the mere fact that such a thing could
be done would probably serve as a deterrent against closing the road to
India for the Jews. I was extremely happy to find that the President
read the map very quickly and very clearly. He promised me that he
would communicate at once with the American delegation at Lake
Success.

At about three o'clock in the afternoon of the same day, Ambassador
Herschel Johnson, head of the American delegation, called in Mr.
Shertok of the Jewish Agency in order to advise him of the decision on
the Negev, which by all indications excluded Akaba from the Jewish
State. Shortly after Mr. Shertok entered, but before the subject was
broached, the American delegates were called to the telephone. At the
other end of the wire was the President of the United States, telling
them that he considered the proposal to keep Akaba within the Jewish
State a reasonable one, and that they should go forward with it. When
Mr. Johnson and General Hilldring emerged from the telephone booth
after a half-hour conversation, they returned to Mr. Shertok, who was
waiting for them, tense with anxiety. All they had for him was the
casual remark : “Oh, Mr. Shertok, we really haven't anything important
to tell you." Obviously the President had been as good as his word, and
a few short hours after I had seen him had given the necessary instruc-
tions to the American delegation.

This decision opened the way to the vote of the General Assembly on
November 29, when, by a majority of thirty-three to thirteen, the United
Nations declared : “The Mandate for Palestine shall terminate as soon as
possible, but in any case not later than August first, 1948. . . . Inde-
pendent Arab and Jewish States, and the specific international regime
for the City of Jerusalem . . . shall come into existence in Palestine two
months after the evacuation of the armed forces of the Mandatory Power
has been completed, but in any case no later than October first, 1948."

CHAPTER 45

The Challenge

The Problems of the Jewish State — Immigration — Defense —
American Help in Finance and Human Resources — Constitu-
tion of the New State — Justice — The Arab Minority — One
Law for All — A Unified School System — Industry and Tech-
nology — Quality Goods — Rural Foundations — Religion and the
State — Relations with Arabs and N eighboring States — The
Bridge between East and West — Building a High Civiliza-
tion.

I WRITE this on the day following the historic decision of the United
Nations.

As the year 1947 draws to a close, the Jewish people, and particularly
the Zionists, face a very great challenge. Before another year is over
we must found a Jewish State; we must prepare a constitution, set up a
government, organize our defenses and begin to reconstruct the present
National Home so as to make it capable of absorbing, according to the
plan, some six to eight thousand immigrants a month.

This last item alone is a tremendous task. Seventy to a hundred thou-
sand immigrants a year represents an increase of over 12 per cent in a
community of six hundred and fifty thousand. But the numbers express
only a part of the problem. In past years immigration included a large
class of people who, if not rich, certainly could not be classified as paupers.
The majority of them had some worldly possessions; they were in good
health, some had a little capital, others brought their machinery with
them, nearly all of them had a trade. The financing of this immigration
was a difficult but not unduly heavy task. The immigrant who comes in
today is completely destitute. He has been robbed of everything. In many
cases he is morally and physically sick and must undergo a long process
of rehabilitation and adjustment before he can become productive. This
task alone will tax to a very high degree the financial powers of Jewry;
and as European Jewry is today small in numbers, and, apart from a
few Western communities, quite impoverished, the burden of this oper-
ation will fall on the American Jewish community.

To the foregoing must be added the requirements for defense, which,

460

THE CHALLENGE 4(31

as I hear now, are mounting* to something like twenty-five million dol-
lars a year, but will probably increase. We must also undertake a num-
ber of necessary technical improvements, like the renovation of means of
communication, roads, rolling stock, and harbors. A large number of
new buildings will be required. All this will put before us the necessity
of raising a loan and of introducing taxes as quickly as possible. In short,
we face the difficult and complex problem of the financing of the new
State.

Nor is it by any means solely a question of finance. It is proper to
ask whether we have all the men needed for our task. Without wishing
to reflect on the men who have carried the burden hitherto, I believe we
would do well not only to seek financial assistance from the American
Jews, but to draw on the human resources of this country. There are
many young people sympathetic to the movement who have had vast
experience in running important state services, and who are willing to
help. There are numbers of such persons in England. It will be a very
severe test for the Zionists ; they must show that they can divest them-
selves of their legitimate desires to become high public servants and to
occupy positions which they may have deserved because of their activi-
ties. They must recognize that it is in the interest of the State to bring
new forces and new points of view to bear on the whole situation.

A great deal will also depend on the constitution. It would be regret-
table if the constitution of the new republic were to be fashioned in the
image of that of the Zionist Organization. The latter is based on the
principle of proportionate representation, which necessarily leads to the
existence of a great many parties. We must try to avoid a repetition of
the elections to the Vaad Leumi — ^the representative body of Palestinian
Jewry hitherto. I think it would be sounder to have a constitution like
the American, or almost no constitution, like the British, at any rate
for the beginning, and to feel our way for the first few years before lay-
ing down hard and fast rules.

But all these matters, whether in the realm of finance or of constitu-
tional arrangements, really deal with the externals of the situation. As
the State is merely a means to an end it is necessary to envisage the
end ; or, to change the figure, the State is merely a vessel into which the
contents still have to be poured, and it is necessary to know what the
contents are likely to be.

Now the first element in such contents, and in my opinion the very
lifeblood of a stable society, is justice; and not merely as an abstract
principle, but as carried out in the law courts and by the judiciary. It
must be quick, it must not be expensive — so that everyone has access to
it — and it must be equal for everyone. There must not be one law for
the Jew and another for the Arabs. We must stand firm by the ancient
principle enunciated in our Torah: ‘'One law and one manner shall be

TRIAL AND ERROR

462

for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you/' In saying this,
I do not assume that there are tendencies toward inequality or discrim-
ination. It is merely a timely warning which is particularly necessary
because we shall have a very large Arab minority. I am certain that the
world will judge the Jewish State by what it will do with the Arabs,
just as the Jewish people at large will be judged by what we do or fail
to do in this State where we have been given such a wonderful oppor-
tunity after thousands of years of wandering and suffering.

It is such an extraordinary phenomenon that it will no doubt be the
sensation of the century, and both our friends and our enemies — ^the
latter more than the former — ^will be watching us carefully. Palestine
has always been a powerful sounding board ; it will become much more
so when the Jewish State has been formed. Our security will to a great
extent depend not only on the armies and navies which we can create,
but on the internal moral stability of the country, which will in turn
influence its external political stability.

But justice, though the first, is only one of the elements in the contents
of the State. We shall be faced with an important reform in the whole
system of education, and particularly in our elementary and secondary
schools. We have at present a system based on class divisions. I think
it is essential to see that we have a unified school system for which the
State as a whole is responsible, and not some political party which tries
to shape the mind of the child almost from the cradle. Party control of
education makes for inefficiency and produces a bias in the mind and
soul of the child from the very start. It will weaken, and not strengthen
the State. Instead of partisanship there must be citizenship, which of
course transcends party interests.

Our technical and higher education has to be brought up to date and
expanded with the new needs of the State. We shall need railway engi-
neers, harbor engineers and shipbuilders. We shall now have the oppor-
tunity of introducing new industries ,* to this end we must enlarge greatly
the available technical skill, increasing it in quantity and improving it in
quality and efficiency. This again is a matter of schooling, beginning
sometimes with the early years of the child. So, for instance, there is in
Switzerland a very long course — six or seven years — ^in the watch-
making school, which turns out skilled workmen and foremen. This is
why Swiss watchmaking has taken such a high place in world industry.
The same principle is applicable to all other industrial enterprises.

Palestine will have to produce quality goods ; only in this way can it
compete with larger and more powerful countries which swamp the
market with mass-produced goods. Now the production of quality goods
is not merely a matter of skill. It is also based on an honest relationship
to the task in hand, on a desire to do justice to the product, to allow only
the best to come out of the workshop, and to avoid shoddiness. It

THE CHALLENGE 463

is in this way that a name and reputation are acquired^ which is a very
substantial part of the economic battle.

Into the same category fall honesty and frank relationships with the
world outside; in the long run these are also profitable. One may be
tempted to get rich quickly by producing shabby stufiE which may find an
initial sale, particularly in backward countries; but this sort of pro-
duction corrupts the producer, who in the end becomes unable to im-
prove himself, and remains on a low level in the industrial world.
Therefore integrity in commercial and industrial relations, efficiency, and
the desire to produce the best and the most beautiful, are the essential
props on which a great industry can be built even in a small country.
Again and again I should like to quote the example of Switzerland. The
nature of the industry differs from country to country, depending on
climate, geographic position, availability of this or that raw material ;
but the principles behind the fashioning of the product out of the raw
material are the same. One may, indeed, speak of moral industrial
development.

Happily we have made an excellent beginning in our agricultural
colonization. I believe we have, through our system of land nationaliza-
tion and co-operatives, avoided many mistakes from which old and
powerful states suffer in their economy today. We have no “poor whites,”
and we also have no feudal landlords. We have a healthy, intelligent,
educated small holder, who cultivates his land intensively, in a scientific
way, is able to extract sustenance in a dignified fashion from a com-
paratively small plot, have a house and hearth, and even economize a little
for a rainy day. So much has been written and said about this side of our
life, that I need not expatiate on it here. I would only like to add that if
I had to begin my life over again, and educate my children again, I would
perhaps emulate the example of our peasants in Nahalal or Daganiah.

There is now an opportunity to acquire more land, create more and
more of these settlements, and establish again a sort of balance between
the town and the village. Civilization is based more on the village and on
God’s earth than on the town, however attractive certain features of our
town life may be. It is in the quiet nooks and corners of the village that
the language, the poetry and literature of a country are enriched. The
stability of the country does not depend so much on the towns as on the
rural population. The more numerous and the more settled the latter,
the wider and more solid is the basis of the State. We do not need, in
our case, to fear the conservatism or backwardness of the Jewish peasant,
or the emergence of a kulak type. This cannot happen any more under
our system. One would like to see an offset against the rapid growth of
towns like Tel Aviv and Haifa. One should strive toward decentraliza-
tion of the urban population, and not toward the creation of monster
cities as we see them in Europe or America. These monster cities are

TRIAL AND ERROR

464

of necessity composed of slums and something like luxurious dwellings,
not to say palaces. We have still time to avoid these extremes in our city
and village planning. A village in Palestine can have all the advantages
of the town because of its nearness to the latter, and all the amenities of a
village life, distances being very small.

Many questions will emerge in the formative stages of the State with
regard to religion. There are powerful religious communities in Palestine
which now, under a democratic regime, will rightly demand to assert
themselves. I think it is our duty to make it clear to them from the very
beginning that whereas the State will treat with the highest respect the
true religious feelings of the community, it cannot put the clock back by
making religion the cardinal principle in the conduct of the state.
Religion should be relegated to the synagogue and the homes of those
families that want it ; it should occupy a special position in the schools ;
but it shall not control the ministries of State.

I have never feared really religious people. The genuine type has never
been politically aggressive; on the contrary, he seeks no power, he is
modest and retiring — and modesty was the great feature in the lives of
our saintly Rabbis and sages in olden times. It is the new, secularized
type of Rabbi, resembling somewhat a member of a clerical party in Ger-
many, France or Belgium, who is the menace, and who will make a heavy
bid for power by parading his religious convictions. It is useless to point
out to such people that they transgress a fundamental principle which
has been laid down by our sages : “Thou shalt not make of the Torah a
crown to glory in, or a spade to dig with.’’ There will be a great struggle.
I foresee something which will perhaps be reminiscent of the Kultur-
kampf in Germany, but we must be firm if we are to survive ; we must
have a clear line of demarcation between legitimate religious aspirations
and the duty of the State toward preserving such aspirations, on the one
hand, and on the other hand the lust for power which is sometimes
exhibited by pseudo-religious groups.

I have spoken of the problem of our internal relations with our Arab
minority ; we must also face the arduous task of achieving understanding
and co-operation with the Arabs of the Middle East. The successful
accomplishment of this task will depend on two important factors. First,
the Arabs must be given the feeling that the decision of the United
Nations is final, and that the Jews will not trespass on any territory out-
side the boundaries assigned to them. As to the latter, there does exist
such a fear in the heart of many Arabs, and this fear must be eliminated
in every way. Second — and this links up with our internal problem —
they must see from the outset that their brethren within the Jewish
State are treated exactly like the Jewish citizens. It will be necessary to
create a special department dealing with the non- Jewish minority. The

THE CHALLENGE 465

object of the department shall be to associate this minority with all the
benefits and activities which will grow up in the Jewish State.

The situation requires tact, understanding, human sympathy, and a
great deal of political wisdom ; but I believe that if we follow the lines
indicated, the much-desired co-operation will come about, even if slowly.
But we must also turn our face to the Oriental countries beyond the
Middle East. It was my good fortune during those fateful days of the
United Nations sittings to come in close contacts with the Indian dele-
gation, which contained a number of highly distinguished men and
women. We had many talks with them, and it w^as they who took the
initiative in proposing, first, that I should visit India; second, that we
should send a group of Jewish scientists and engineers to India in order
to propose new developments; third, the Indian students should come
to the Jewish places of learning in Palestine. These men look upon
Palestine as an outpost of Western civilization in relation to the Orient.
Here is a mighty opportunity to build a bridge between the East and the
West, which is one of the most attractive roles which the Jewish State
in Palestine can play. It is a task which by itself is of a magnitude which
calls for the efforts of many able men. Do our people, in their present
mood of victory, realize all the implications of this new state of affairs,
and have we the personnel capable of implementing the possibilities after
they have been weighed correctly?

I have spoken of the East. There is also a Western region of Mediter-
ranean countries with which good neighborly relations will have to be
established : Greece, Italy, the Mediterranean islands, as far as Gibraltar.
There is Turkey, which also looks upon Palestine as an outpost of Euro-
pean civilization. Our commercial and industrial development will
depend to a great extent on our relations with these countries. Given the
right relations, Palestine can become a modern Phoenecia, and her ships
can trade as far as the coasts of America.

It is not the purpose of these closing pages to outline the full program
of the Jewish State. An enormous amount wiU have to be left to trial and
error, and we shall have to learn the hard way — ^by experience. These
are merely indications and signposts pointing along the road which in my
opinion must be followed if we are to reach our goal. This goal is the
building of a high civilization based on the austere standards of Jewish
ethics. From these standards we must not swerve, as some elements
have done during the short period of the National Home, by bending the
knee to strange gods. The Prophets have always chastized the Jewish
people with the utmost severity for this tendency; and whenever it
slipped back into paganism, whenever it reverted, it was punished by the
stern God of Israel. Whether prophets will once more arise among the
Jews in the near future it is difficult to say. But if they choose the way
of honest and hard and clean living, on the land in settlements built on

466 TRIAL AND ERROR

the old principles, and in cities cleansed of the dross which has been
sometimes mistaken for civilization; if they center their activities on
genuine values, whether in industry, agriculture, science, literature or
art ; then God will look down benignly on His children who after a long
wandering have come home to serve Him with a psalm on their lips and
a spade in their hands, reviving their old country and making it a center
of human civilization.

Shaded areas show the
}oundaries of the State
Df Israel as fixed by
i resolution of the
United Nations, No-
irember 2Q, ig47-

Epilogue

Some nine months have passed since I wrote the last chapter of
these memoirs. I believed then that my task was ended and that the
long — perhaps too long — record was complete. But the events which
have filled the interval have been of a character which compels me, both
on personal and general grounds, to add another word. I have made no
change in what I wrote until November 30 of 1947, even where the
record ‘‘dates” : what follows here is a brief review of the extraordinary
developments which have intervened.

We accepted the United Nations resolution of November 29 for what
it was — a solemn international decision. We assumed — ^perhaps without
thinking very deeply about the matter — that insofar as United Nations
action might be needed to implement the decision, such action would be
forthcoming ; but we also assumed — ^and here we were on firmer ground
— that the main responsibility for implementation would rest with our-
selves. For my own part, I felt that the sooner I was in Palestine, the
better, and made my preparations accordingly.

For family and other reasons we decided to pay a short visit to Lon-
don en route, and we were back at our old apartment in the Dorchester
on December 23, 1947. There was, it seemed, little political work to be
done in England, for the British Government had announced its inten-
tion of abiding loyally by the United Nations decision. We settled down
to enjoy the company of our children and of a few friends ; I attended
to some long neglected business affairs. I addressed a meeting at Pales-
tine House, and a small dinner party in aid of the Joint Palestine
Appeal ; these were my only public engagements. We booked air passage
. to Palestine for January 25.

Within those few weeks, however, a disturbing change came over
the situation at Lake Success, a result of the deteriorating position in
London and Palestine. It soon became evident that the British Govern-
ment placed a peculiar interpretation on its “loyal acceptance” of the
United Nations decision. The Assembly of the United Nations had
appointed a Committee of Five — ^known later as the “Five Lonely

469

TRIAL AND ERROR

470

Pilgrims” — ^to proceed to Palestine and begin the implementation of the
decision. A Jewish militia was to be created and a Provisional Council
of Government set up. If, on the withdrawal of the Mandatory Power
Arab opposition developed, the Security Council was to establish an
international force ; in the meantime the Mandatory was responsible for
the maintenance of order. But when, a few days after the meeting of the
Security Council, there were Arab attacks on Jewish transports, the
Mandatory took no steps. It appeared that the British Government
regarded the mere protection of Jewish life as an implementation of
partition, and '^oyal acceptance” of the United Nations decision did not
call for that. The disturbances, which could easily have been suppressed
by prompt action, were permitted to spread — a familiar story, this. The
Jewish defense forces were at that time still ''underground.” They had
no access to the arms markets of the world. Such arms as they possessed
were liable to seizure when discovered. Itself refusing to protect the
Jewish community, the Mandatory did not acknowledge the right of the
community to protect itself. Haganah convoys were searched, Haganah
fighters arrested in the act of defending Jewish lives. "Loyal acceptance”
of the decision became, in effect, a process of sabotage.

Nor was it all passive. The Mandatory Power refused the United
Nations Committee entry into Palestine, refused to permit the organiza-
tion of a Jewish militia to take over defense, refused to comply with
the Assembly’s recommendation to open a port of immigration, refused
to hand over any of the Government services to an incoming Jewish
successor; it expelled Palestine from the sterling bloc, dismantled the
equipment of administration without handing any of it over, and simul-
taneously allowed the Government services to disintegrate. But while
Palestine was closed to the Committee of the United Nations, its fron-
tiers were open to the invasion of irregular Arab forces, which came
across the Allenby Bridge on the Jordan, an easily guarded point.
Under these circumstances it is not to be wondered at that Arab attacks
multiplied; The Arabs now felt that what they could not obtain by
argument in the court of the United Nations, they could compel by
force of arms.

They were encouraged in this view by the apparent effects of their
lawlessness on opinion in the United States and the United Nations.
The Jews of Palestine, whose hands were tied by the Mandatory
Power, were hastily and superficially adjudged incapable of defending
themselves, and the cry arose in certain quarters that only armed inter-
vention by the United Nations — contingency which became remoter
with every passing day — could save the November decision. The Jews
were openly accused of having exaggerated their own strength, while
underestimating the military power of the Arabs, and of having thus
obtained the grant of statehood by what was nothing more nor less than

EPILOGUE

471

a bltifF. On top of all this the United States had established an arms
embargo for the entire Near East, an action which seemingly placed
Arab aggressors and Jewish defenders on the same footing. Thus a
wholly synthetic situation was created which enabled the enemies of the
Jewish State to make a last, desperate attempt to force a revision of the
United Nations decision.

Toward the middle of January, I was besieged in London by letters,
telegrams and telephone calls from friends in the United States. The
Executive of the Jewish Agency sent me a formal invitation to return
to New York and to co-operate with it in the gathering crisis. I was
reluctant to accept. I still nourished the hope that things would some-
how straighten themselves out, and I believed I could be more useful
on the Palestinian scene. But as the time for our departure approached
the telephone calls from New York became more numerous and more
urgent, as one responsible friend after another pleaded with me to
change my course. One day before the plane was due to leave we
canceled the flight, and succeeded in obtaining passage on the Queen
Mary for January 27. The last two days in London were something of
a nightmare. We had arranged to give up our flat at the Dorchester on
the twenty-fifth, and the moving man moved in promptly. He chased
us from room to room taking carpets from under our feet, cushions
from behind our backs, pictures from over our heads, till what had for
nine years been our London home dissolved before our eyes and re-
verted to the hotel suite it really was. And all the while there was a
constant stream of telegrams and telephone calls. It was in a tlioroughly
exhausted condition that my wife and I reached the boat train on the
twenty-seventh.

We arrived in New York again on February 4, and on the same day
I issued a statement to the press in which I said, among other things:

am weU aware that the implementation of the United Nations resolu-
tion raises many difficulties, but these difficulties are as nothing com-
pared with the dangers which would arise if the United Nations policy
were to be altered by force. If that were to happen, which I do not
believe will, one result would be the decline of the United Nations and
a grave blow to the very idea of international authority. Another would
be the prolongation of conflict in Palestine. . . . The interests of America
lie in the strengthening of the United Nations, in the curtailment of
conflict in the Near East, and in the strictest fidelity to the policies to
which they are pledged. . . . The steadfast courage of the Jews of
Palestine fills me with the greatest pride. They have a right to expect
that the civilized world which has endorsed their title to national inde-
pendence will not leave them in the lurch in the face of a murderous
attack which is being openly prepared gainst them by forces of^ ex-
tremism and violence in the Arab world. . . . The urgent task now is to

472 TRIAL AND ERROR

convince Arab opinion by tangible facts that the Jewish State cannot
be prevented from coming into existence. . .

The truth is, as all can now see plainly, that these facts really ex-
isted, but were being deliberately obscured in a political play. I was
profoundly convinced that not only were the Jews of Palestine thor-
oughly capable of defending themselves, but that the much-touted
danger of complete administrative chaos in Palestine, following on the
British withdrawal, was an illusion, chiefly created by the British course
of action, but belied, in fact, by the soundness of the structure of Jewish
life. But it was not easy, in those days, to convince people that the
realities of the Palestinian situation were being misrepresented. In
Washington it was already being taken for granted that, in deference
to the '‘facts,'' a fundamental revision would have to take place, and
the November decision, if not actually reversed, deferred — ^perhaps
sine die. When the Security Council began to discuss the problem at
the end of February, the United States leadership was weak. Of the
Powers which had supported the November decision, only the Soviet
Union still insisted on the assertion of the United Nations authority.
The Security Council failed to adopt any resolution for backing up the
decision of the General Assembly.

Under these circumstances I obtained an interview with the President
of the United States. Unfortunately it was delayed for many reasons,
one of them being my ill-health, brought on largely by the strain and
pressure of events. By the time I arrived in Washington, on March i8,
the adverse tide had apparently become irresistible. The President was
sympathetic personally, and still indicated a firm resolve to press for-
ward with partition. I doubt, however, whether he was himself aware
of the extent to which his own policy and purpose had been balked by
subordinates in the State Department. On the following day, March 19,
Senator Austin, the United States representative in the Security Coun-
cil, announced the reversal of American policy. He proposed that the
implementation of partition be suspended, that a truce be arranged in
Palestine, and that a special session of the General Assembly be called
in order to approve a trusteeship for Palestine, to take effect when the
Mandate ended, i.e., on May 15th. In spite of all the forewarnings, the
blow was sudden, bitter and, on the surface, fatal to our long nurtured
hopes.

The notion of a new trusteeship for Palestine at this late date was
utterly unrealistic. Palestine Jewry had outgrown the state of tutelage.
Moreover, ever3d;hing that had made the Mandate unworkable would
be present in the trusteeship, but aggravated by the recollection that
only a few months before we had been adjudged worthy of statehood.
To have accepted this decision would have meant to make ourselves
ludicrous in the eyes of history.

EPILOGUE

475

In a statement to the press I said, on March 25 : ‘The plan worked
out by the Assembly was the result of a long and careful process of
deliberation in which the conflicting claims of the various parties were
judged in the light of international equity. In order to achieve a com-
promise between Jewish and Arab national claims, the Jews were
asked to be content with one eighth of the original area of the Palestine
Mandate. They were called upon to co-operate in a settlement for
Jerusalem which set that city's international associations above its pre-
dominantly Jewish character. We accepted these limitations only be-
cause they were decreed by the supreme authority of international
judgment, and because in the small area allotted to us we would be free
to bring in our people, and enjoy the indispensable boon of sovereignty
— a privilege conferred upon the Arabs in vast territories . . .

“Now some people suggest that the partition decision be shelved be-
cause it has not secured the agreement of all parties! Yet it was because
the Mandatory Power itself constantly emphasized that the prospect of
agreement was nonexistent that it submitted the question to the United
Nations. . . . Whatever solution may be imposed will require enforce-
ment. A sustained effort should be made on behalf of a solution twice
recommended by distinguished commissions — ^the Royal Commission
and UNSCOP, and now reinforced by the Assembly's authority. I
have spent many years laboring at this strenuous problem, and I loiow
there is today no other practical solution, and none more likely to
achieve stability in the long run — certainly not the Arab unitary state
which the conscience of the world has rejected, or the so-called federal
formula which is in fact nothing but an Arab state in another guise, or
an impossible effort to impose trusteeship and arrest the progress of
the Palestinian Jews toward their rightful independence.

“But for the admission into Palestine of foreign Arab forces no prob-
lem of security would have arisen which the local militia envisaged by
the Assembly's decision could not have controlled. I shall never under-
stand how the Mandatory Government could allow foreign Arab forces
to cross freely by bridge and road into Palestine and prepare in leisure
and with impunity to make war against the Jews and against the settle-
ment adopted by the United Nations. I have always paid high tribute
to the great act of statesmanship of Great Britain in inaugurating the
international recognition of our right to nationhood. But in exposing
ever3rthing and everybody in Palestine to destruction by foreign in-
vaders the Mandatory Government has acted against its own best tradi-
tion and left a tragic legacy to the country's future. . . .

“The Jews of Palestine will have the support of Jews the world over
in those steps which they will dean necessary to assure their survival
and national freedom when the Mandate ends. I would now urge the
Jewish people to redouble its efforts to secure the defense and freedom
of the Jewish State. ...”

474 TRIAL AND ERROR

In a private letter to the President of the United States, written on
April 9, I elaborated these views in detail, adding, in view of the wide-
spread rumours that Palestine would be left by the Mandatory in a
state of chaos: and Arabs are both mature for independence,

and are already obedient in a large degree to their own institutions,
while the central British administration is in virtual collapse. In large
areas Jews and Arabs are practically in control of their own lives and
interests. The clock cannot be put back to the situation which existed
before November 29. I would also draw attention to the psychological
effects of promising Jewish independence in November and attempting
to cancel it in March. . . .

‘The choice for our people, Mr. President, is between statehood and
extermination. History and providence have placed this issue in your
hands, and I am confident that you will yet decide it in the spirit of
the moral law.’’

In the swift movement of recent events a great part of the public
may already have forgotten how dark the picture looked for us only a
few months ago, and how completely it was dominated by the curious
notion that the Zionists were “through.” Shortly after the reversal of
policy in the United Nations the United States delegation, consisting of
Senator Austin, Professor Jessup and Mr. Ross, called on us at my
hotel and tried to enlist my support for the trusteeship proposal. I must
have astonished as well as disappointed them, for I declared bluntly
that I put no stock in the legend of Arab military might, and that I
considered the intention of Palestine Jewry to proclaim its independence
the day the Mandate ended thoroughly justified and eminently realistic.
M. Parodi, the representative of France, came to dinner, and renewed
the arguments of the American delegation. I had the same answer for
him. I added that, given half a chance, -the Jews of Palestine would
render the world a service by exploding the myth which had been built
up round the Arab aggressors. M. Parodi was polite, but obviously
incredulous. A few months later, when the issue had been joined and
decided, he informed the Jewish representative at Lake Success : “What
I thought was Dr. Weizmann’s propaganda appears to be the truth.”

My strongest protestations I reserved for Mr. Creech- Jones, the
British Colonial Secretary, who visited me while I was on my sick bed.
Great Britain was in an anomalous position: largely responsible for
the failure— up to that point — of the partition decision, but showing no
enthusiasm for the alternative proposal of trusteeship. The British view
seemed to Be that Arabs and Jews should be left to themselves for an
unavoidable period of blood-letting. The British clearly anticipated that
the Arabs would make substantial inroads on the territory allotted to
the Jews, and on the basis of the situation thus created a new solution
would be reached, favorable, both politically and territorially, to the

EPILOGUE

475

Arabs. It is an astonishing reflection on the relationship of the British
to Palestine that they, who had been on the spot for the last thirty years,
should have made so false an appraisal of the factors.’ For either they
were really convinced that the Arabs would overwhelm us or else — and
this betrayed an even profounder misreading of the realities — ^they be-
lieved that we would ignominiously surrender our rights without so
much as a test. Mr. Creech-Jones pleaded that the invasion of Pales-
tinian soil by 79 5^^^ Arabs had taken the Mandatory Power unawares,
but there they were and the Jews had to reckon with them. My answer
was that we had no intention of evacuating any of the territory allotted
to us. It was with the deepest pain that I saw the Mandate coming to
an end under circumstances so unworthy of its beginnings, but the fault
was not ours. The British had declared that ‘'as long as they are in
Palestine they insist on undivided control of the country.’^ One could
quite understand that a Great Power should be jealous of its prestige,
but Great Britain had not been jealous enough to keep out the Arab
invaders. Was that an enhancement of Britain's prestige ? And how did
it accord with Britain's good name to leave the country in a state of
organized chaos? On these points Mr. Creech-Jones was extremely
evasive.

The General Assembly of the United Nations reconvened in mid-
April. By that time we had something more than protestations to offer,
for the realities had begun to emerge. The so-called liberation army
of Fawzi Kawakji had been soundly trounced at Mishmar Ha-Emek.
In some parts of the country the Jewish forces had assumed the offen-
sive. In an admirable display of discipline and initiative, the Yishuv was
beginning to erect the pattern of an effective state on the ruins of the
Mandatory regime. It created departments of centralized government
in areas which the British were progressively evacuating. It was clear
that while the United Nations was debating trusteeship, the Jewish
State was coming into being.

It had been anticipated that the trusteeship plan would be adopted
without difficulty; but within the two months since its proposal, the
situation had again altered radically. The session of the Assembly was
made notable by the remarkable address of the New Zealand representa-
tive, Sir Carl Berendsen, who demanded that the United Nations take
a stand on its own decision. “What the United Nations needs," he said,
“is not resolutions but resolution." His view won support from Aus-
tralia and from the countries of Eastern Europe, and from the ever
gallant defenders of the Jewish cause from South America, including
Professor Fabregat, of Uruguay, and Dr. Granados, of Guatemala, with
both of whom I was in close contact. It was at this time, too, that I
made the acquaintance of the Secretary General of the United Nations,
Mr. Trygve Lie who, within the powers granted him by the Charter,

^76 TRIAL AND ERROR

jealously asserted the Assembly’s authority. During those crucial days
we had many defenders in the public press, foremost among them Mr.
Sumner Welles, who wrote a number of impressive articles in the
Herald Tribune. The New York Times ^ which at best had been always
cool to the Zionist program, strongly criticized the United States re-
versal, and urged that partition be given a chance.

Still, it was hard going. When it became clear in the Assembly that
the trusteeship plan could not be adopted, another delaying formula
was devised — 2 . “Temporary Truce”: both parties were to cease fire,
no political decision was to be taken, a limited Jewish immigration was
to be permitted for a few months, and in exchange for this transient
and dubious security the Jews were to refrain from proclaiming their
State in accordance with the November decision. The proposal was to
all appearances a harmless one : at bottom it was profoundly dangerous,
if only for the reason that every refusal to face the realities of the situa-
tion weakened the authority of the United Nations and encouraged in
the enemies of the Jewish State the belief that its creation could be
prevented.

I was of course in intimate consultation during this period with Mr.
Shertok, our chief spokesman at the United Nations and his colleagues.
They were thoroughly aware of the dangers which lurked in the truce
proposal ; but they were also aware that it made a strong appeal to the
less determined elements in our own ranks. Perhaps the most telling
argument against us was that in proclaiming a Jewish State in the face,
apparently, of American disapproval, we should be alienating a power-
ful friend. Moreover, it needed a certain moral courage to decline a
truce when our nascent army in Palestine was still so ill-equipped and
the issue apparently still in doubt. Messrs. Shertok, Goldmann and their
colleagues felt that at this point my views on the situation would have
a considerable effect both within and without our ranks.

On the issue of this truce, as on that of the trusteeship, I was never
in a moment’s doubt. It was plain to me that retreat would be fatal.
Our only chance now, as in the past, was to create facts, to confront
the world with these facts, and to build on their foundation. Independ-
ence is never given to a people ; it has to be earned ; and having been
earned, it has to be defended. As to the attitude of the United States
Government, I felt that many of those who were advising us to ignore
the United Nations decision in our favor, and to let our independence
go by default, would respect us more if we did not accept their advice.
I was convinced that once we had taken our d^tin;^ into our own hands
and established the Republic, the American{jpeople}would applaud our
resolution, and see in our successful struggle Tor independence the
image of its own national liberation a century and three-quarters ago.
So strongly did I feel this that at a time when the United States was

EPILOGUE

477

formally opposed to our declaration of independence I already began
to be preoccupied with the idea of American recognition of the Jewish
State.

Many friends and colleagues thought I was being somewhat less
than realistic, and tried to dissuade me from encouraging a step which
in their opinion could only end in retreat and disaster. They expressed
astonishment at what they called my unwonted intransigeance. In
Palestine, where the doubts and hesitations which reigned at Lake
Success found no echo, there was no thought of relinquishing the rights
conferred on us, and by a suicidal act of self-denial refusing statehood ;
or, if there was any doubt, it was connected with our intentions in
America rather than with those of the Palestinian Jews, In the general
breakdown of British administration, there was a period when com-
munications between America and Palestine were irregular and un-
reliable. Our views at the American end were not at all clear to the
Yishuv. Mr. Ben-Gurion, the chairman of the Jewish Agency Executive,
was trying, without success, to ascertain exactly where I stood. In the
early part of May, Mr. Shertok left for Palestine to clear matters up,
and in the second week of that month I strengthened our contacts with
our friends in Washington, and affirmed my intention of going ahead
with a bid for recognition of the Jewish State as soon as it was pro-
claimed. On May 13 I addressed the following letter to the President of
the United States:

Dear Mr. President:

The unhappy events of the last few months will not, I hope, ob-
scure the very great contributions which you, Mr. President, have
made toward a definitive and just settlement of the long and trouble-
some Palestine question. The leadership which the American Govern-
ment took under your inspiration made possible the establishment of
a Jewish State, which I am convinced will contribute markedly
toward a solution of the world Jewish problem, and which I am
equally convinced is a necessary preliminary to the development of
lasting peace among the peoples of the Near East.

So far as practical conditions in Palestine would permit, the Jewish
people there have proceeded along the lines laid down in the United
Nations Resolution of November 29, 1947. Tomorrow midnight,
May 15, the British Mandate will be terminated, and the Provisional
Government of the Jewish State, embodying the best endeavors of
the Jewish people and arising from the Resolution of the United
Nations, will assume full responsibility for preserving law and order
within ffie botmdaries of the Jewish State, for defending that area
against external aggression, and for discharging the obligations of
the Jewish State to the other nations of the world in accordance with
international law.

Considering all the difficulties, the chances for an equitable adjust-

478 TRIAL AND ERROR

merit of Arab and Jewish relationships are not unfavorable. What is
required now is an end to the seeking of new solutions which invar-
iably have retarded rather than encouraged a final settlement.

It is for these reasons that I deeply hope that the United States,
which under your leadership has done so much to find a just solution,
will promptly recognize the Provisional Government of the new Jew-
ish State. The world, I think, will regard it as especially appropriate
that the greatest living democracy should be the first to welcome the
newest into the family of nations.

Respectfully yours,

Chaim Weizmann

On the fourteenth of May the President and his advisers were in con-
stant consultation on the Palestine issue. The Assembly of the United
Nations had neither revoked nor reaffirmed its resolution of November
29. In Palestine the British Mandate had only a few more hours to run.*
On the same day a historic assembly of the representatives of the Yishitv
was convoked in Tel Aviv, and proclaimed to the world the rightful
independence of the Jewish State, to take effect as of the hour of the
termination of the British Mandate.

At a few minutes past six o'clock, American time, unofficial news
reached Lake Success that the Jewish State had been recognized by the
Government of the United States. The delegates were incredulous,
which perhaps was natural at a time when many wild rumors were
running through the corridors of the United Nations building. The
United States delegation was unaware of any such decision. Finally,
after much confusion, Professor Jessup rose to read the following state-
ment issued from the White House :

This Government has been informed that a Jewish State has been
proclaimed in Palestine, and recognition has been requested by the
Provisional Government itself. The United States recognizes the Pro-
visional Government as the de facto authority of the new State of
Israel.

This historic statement must be regarded not only as an act of high
statesmanship ; it had a peculiar and significant fitness, for it set the seal
on America's long and generous record of support of Zionist aspirations.

On May 15 a great wave of rejoicing spread throughout the Jewish
world. We were not unmindful of the dangers which hung over the
new-born State. Five Arab armies were at its frontiers, threatening
invasion ; our forces were not yet properly organized ; we were cut off
from international support. But the die was cast. The demoralizing
illusions of trusteeship and truce were behind us. We were now face to
face with the basic realities, and this was what we had asked for. If the

* It should be borne in mind that Palestine time is seven hours in advance of
Washington time.

EPILOGUE

479

State of Israel could defend itself, survive and remain effective, it would
do so largely on its own; and the issue would be decided, as we were
willing it should be, by the basic strength and solidity of the organism
which we had created in the last fifty years.

May 15 was a very full day. Recognition was extended to the State
of Israel by the Soviet Union and Poland, to be followed shortly by
several countries of Eastern Europe and South America. Great Britain
remained silent, and I received reports that Mr. Bevin was bringing
pressure to bear on the British Dominions and Western Europe to with-
hold recognition. Howeyer, I bethought myself of one surviving author
of the Balfour Declaration and addressed a cablegram to General Smuts.
This was closely followed by South African recognition.

On this same day, amidst the avalanche of messages reaching me from
Tel Aviv, there was one signed by the five Labor Party leaders in the
Provisional Government, David Ben-Gurion, Eliezer Kaplan, Golda
Myerson, David Remez and Moshe Shertok.

On the^ occasion of the establishment of the Jewish State we send
our greetings to you, who have done more than any other living man
toward its creation. Your stand and help have strengthened all of us.
We look fomard to the day when we shall see you at the head of the
State established in peace,

I answered:

My heartiest greetings to you and your colleagues in this great
hour. May God give you strength to carry out the task which has
been laid upon you and to overcome the difficulties still ahead. Please
accept and transmit the following message to the Yishuv in my name :
‘'On the memorable day when the Jewish State arises again after two '
thousand years, I send expressions of love and admiration to all sec-
tions of the Yishuv and warmest greetings to its Government now
entering on its grave and inspiring responsibility. Am fully convinced
that all who have and will become citizens of the Jewish State will
strive their utmost to live up to the new opportunity which history
has bestowed upon them. It will be our destiny to create institutions
and values of a free community in the spirit of the great traditions
which have contributed so much to the thought and spirit of man-
kind.^'

Chaim Weizmann

Two days later, when I was resting in my hotel from the fatigue of
the preceding weeks, a message reached me that, according to one of the
news agencies, the Provisional Council of State had elected me as its
President. I attached no credence to the report, thinking it unlikely that
the Council of State, absorbed with a thousand urgent problems, of
which not the least were the dangers of the invasion, would have been
giving thought to this matter, A few hours later, however, the same

48 o trial and error

message was repeated over the radio and was picked up in the adjoining
room where my wife was entertaining friends. Almost at the same
moment Aubrey Eban, then one of our younger aides at the United
Nations, and at this time of writing the brilliant representative of Israel
before that body — and I might add, one of its most distinguished mem-
bers — came in with some friends from Madison Square Garden, where
the Jews of New York were celebrating the establishment of the Jewish
State at a mass rally which I could not attend because of ill-health.
They brought definite confirmation of the report. That evening my
friends gathered in our hotel apartment, and raised glasses of cham-
pagne in a toast to the President of Israel.

The next day I received a more detailed report of the proceedings in
Tel Aviv. The Minister of Justice, Dr. Felix Rosenblueth, had pro-
posed my election. Mr. Ben-Gurion, Prime Minister and Minister of
Defense, had seconded it. He did not conceal the many differences of
opinion which had divided us in recent years. He went on, however, to
say: “I doubt whether the Presidency is necessary to Dr. Weizmann,
but the Presidency of Dr. Weizmann is a moral necessity for the State
of Israel.'’ I quote tiiese words, at the risk of incurring the charge of
immodesty, only as an indication of the essential unity of purpose which
underlay all those struggles of ideology and method which formed part
of our movement. But I will not deny that the occasion was one which
filled me with pride as well as with a feeling of deep humility. Replying
to the notification of my election, I cabled Ben-Gurion :

Many thanks your cable May seventeenth. Am proud of the great
honor bestowed upon me by Provisional Council of Government of
State of Israel in electing me as its first President. It is in a humble
spirit that I accept this election and am deeply grateful to Council for
confidence it has reposed in me. I dedicate myself to service of land
and people in whose cause I have been privileged to labor these many
years. I send to Provisional Government and people of Israel this
expression of my deepest and most heartfelt affection, invoking bless-
ing of God upon them. I pray that the struggle forced upon us will
speedily end and will be succeeded by era of peace and prosperity for
people of Israel and those waiting to join us in construction and ad-
vancement of new State.

My first official act as President of the State of Israel, and my last on
American soil, was to accept the invitation of the President of the
United States to be his guest in Washington and to take up the usual
residence at Blair House. I traveled from New York to Washington by
special train, and arrived to find Pennsylvania Avenue bedecked with
the flags of the United States and Israel. I was escorted to the conference
at the White House by representatives of the United States Govern-
ment and by Mr. Eliahu Epstein, whom the Provisional Government

EPILOGUE

481

had appointed as its envoy to the United States. In the course o£ our
interview, I expressed our gratitude to the President for the initiative
he had taken in the immediate recognition of the new State, and as a gift
symbolizing the Jewish tradition, I presented him with a scroll of the
Torah. We passed from ceremonial to practical matters and discussed
the economic and political aid which the state of Israel would need in
the critical inonths that lay ahead. The President showed special interest
in the question of a loan for development projects, and in using the
influence of the United States to insure the defense of Israel— if pos-
sible, by preventing Arab aggression through United States action, or,
if war continued to be forced upon us, by insuring that we had the
necessary arms.

The following day I set sail for Europe. It had been my original
intention to go again to England for personal and family reasons. I now
felt that I was no longer free to do so. Arab armies were attacking
Israel by land and from the air; the spearhead of this aggression was
the Arab Legion of Trans-Jordan, equipped by British resources, fi-
nanced by the British Treasury, trained and commanded by British
officers. By a particularly bitter twist of historical irony, the main opera-
tions of this force were directed against the Holy City. The Hebrew
University and the Hadassah Medical Center were under bombardment ;
Jewish shrines in Jerusalem, which had survived the attacks of bar-
barians in medieval times, were now being laid waste. Liberal opinion
throughout the world, and especially in the United States, was pro-
foundly shocked. I had always believed that an anti-Zionist policy was
utterly alien to British tradition, but now an atmosphere had been
created in which the ideals of the State of Israel, and the policies of
Great Britain, under Mr. Bevin^s direction, were brought into bloody
conflict. I had no place in England at such a time, and I felt it to be a
bitter incongruity that I should not be able to set foot in a country
whose people and institutions I held in such high esteem, and with
which I had so long and so stubbornly sought to link the Jewish people
by ties of mutual interest and co-operation. I decided to arrange my
affairs in France ; for that country, my wife and I, accompanied by Mr.
Ivor Linton, Political Secretary of die London Office of the Jewish
Agency, set sail on May 26. From France we proceeded to Switzerland,
where I planned to take a much-needed rest before I went on to Israel
to assume my duties.

Here, in the quiet of Glion, I write these closing lines to the first
part of a story which is not yet half told, is, indeed, hardly begun. Of
the crowded events of the last few months, of the first struggles and
triumphs of the infant State of Israel, of truces and renewed attacks, of
mediation and of old solutions in new guise, I will not speak here. These
matters are too close to be evaluated. All that is written here is by way

TRIAL AND ERROR

48 s

of introduction — one of the many prefaces that may yet be written to the
New History of Israel. Its writing has been for me a labor compounded
of pain and pleasure, but I am thankful to lay it aside in favor of more
active and practical pursuits. If anything I have said should lead the
reader to look more understandingly and more kindly on the early chap-
ters of our new history now in the making, I shall feel amply rewarded.

Glion, Switzerland
August 1948

Index

Aaronson, Aaron (1875-1919), botanist,
180-181

Aberson, Zvi, 64-66 ; assimilation, attack
on, 65; Democratic Fraction, address
to, 65; Lenin, opposition to, 50
Abrahams, Israel (1858-1925), article
on Hebrew University, 136
Abyssinian War, 362
Acetone, manufacture of, 173-174
Achad Ha-am (Asher Ginsburg, 1856-
1927), Zionist philosopher, 27, 32, 63,
68, 106-107; called “Usher” Ginsburg,
leader of “The Elders of Zion” by
anti-Semites, 107-108 ; description,
36-37 ; Hebrew University, letter,
237-238 ; in London, 106 ; personal
evaluation, 107 ; practical Zionist, 12 1 ;
spiritual leader of the Russian Zion-
ists, 58, 60; Technikuntf a founder of,
142

Actions Committee, conference in Co-
penhagen, 165-166 ; Copenhagen office,
Weizmann severed relations with,
166-167; Jewish Agency idea ap-
proved, 307 ; meeting after HerzFs
death, 103 ; Russian members quit
congress meeting, 87-88; Weizmann
severs relations with, 166-167
Agricultural Experimental Station, Re-
hovoth, Palestine, 299, 317
Agriculture, program in Palestine, 277-
278, 298-299

Akaba, region of Palestine, 457-459
Aleichem. See Sholom Aleichem
Alexander II (1818-1881), czar of Rus-
sia, 16

Alexander, Samuel (1859-1938), pro-
fessor, Manchester University, 117-
118

Aliy ah (pioneer movement), 77

Allenby, Gen. Edmund H. H. (1861-
1936), Commander in Chief, Egyptian
Expeditionary Force, 216 ; Feisal,
suggested understanding with, 232 ;
myrtles for Ckallukkah Jews, 230-
231; Palestine pogrom, 257-258;
Weizmann at A’s headquarters, 216-
219

Allenby^s officers, attitude toward Jews,
217-224

Alliance Israelite Universelle, 142; op-
position to Zionism,, 158
America : Weizmann’s scientific work,
frustrations, 428-430 ; Weizmann’s
visits to, 17-18, 62-63, 265-275, 419-
421

American Jewish Committee, helpful at
United Nations, 457

American Provisional Executive Com-
mittee for Zionist Affairs, 165
Americans, support of British protec-
torate for Palestine, 193-194
Anglo-American Commission, 441
Anglo- Jewish Association, 156
Ansky- See Rappaport, Solomon S.
Anti-Semitism : Achad Ha-am, called
leader of “The Elders of Zion,” 107-
iq8; German, 31-32, 165; rise of, 84-
85; Russia, 31
Appeasement era, 402
Appeasement policy, effect on Jewish
Palestine, 379-383
Arab State of Palestine, 406
Arabs: attacks, 254-258, 331, 381-383,
470, 481 ; Higher Committee, 382 ;
Mandate, opposition to, 280 ; mentality
of, 215-216; nationalism, opposition to
Zionism, 213-214, 217, 224; nationalist
movement, 189; Weizmann’s talk
with, 408

483

INDEX

484

Arlosoroff, Victor Chaim (1899-1933),
a founder of Zionist labor party, 73,
295, 300

Asquith, Lord Herbert H. (1852-1928),
diary entry on Jewish Homeland, 150-
151 ; diary entry on Palestine visit,
151 ; English statesman, 150
Assirailationism : attacked by Aberson,
65; German Jews, 3i-33r 35, 42;
Nordau criticism of, 47; revolution-
aries, Switzerland, 50-51 ; Russian
Jews, 53; Western Zionism influenced
by, 82 ; Zionism opposition to, 200-207
Assimilationists, 27-28
Atonement, Day of, 4, 9, 41

Bacdahatische, 34

Balfour, Lord Arthur James (1848-
1930) > 72; Hebrew University, open-
ing ceremony, 317-320; Jewish
National Homeland, support of prom-
ised, 203; meeting with Weizmann,
109-1 1 1, 1 12, 152-154; Palestine, tour
of, 320-322

Balfour Declaration, 59; addressed to
Lord Rothschild, 208; British imper-
ialistic scheme, 177; conference, 188;
final text, 208; .Foreign Office text,
204; framers, intent of, 211-212; im-
plementing problems of, 240-242, 251 ;
Montagu speech against Foreign
Office text, 206; negotiations toward,
200-208; War Cabinet text, 206;
Wilsohs support of War Cabinet
text, 208
Baltic Sea, 8

Bambus, Willi (1863-1904), Zionist
author, 35

Barness, Dr,, head of Pfungstadt school,
31. 32, 33

Basch, Victor Guillaume, 185
Beaverbrook papers, Palestine Mandate,
opposition to, 280, 283
Benley, Mrs., friend of Mrs. Weizmann,

113

Bentwich, Herbert (1856-1932), at Bal-
four Declaration conference, 188;
practical Zionist, 121 ; Zionist at
London, 116

Berdichevsky, Micha Joseph (1865-
1921), 68

Berendsen, Sir Carl, Jewish State, sup-
port of, 475
Berges, Judah, 24

Bergmann, Dr. David, chemist : experi-
ence in exile, 356-357 ,* in Ministry of
Supply with Weizmann, 423
Berlin, Germany, 135; Jewish commu-
nity in, 40; Russian-Jewish student
colonies, 34-35; Weizmann in, 35-40;
Zionism in, 288-289

Berne rebellion, Zionism strengthened
by, 51

Bernstein, Eduard (1850-1932), 65
Bertie, Lord Francis Levison (1844-
1919), English diplomat, 151
Besserabets (anti-Semitic newspaper),
77

Bettelstudent^ 6$, 66
Bevin, Ernest (1881- ), British For-
eign Secretary, 440
Beyrouth, 124-125

Bezalel Arts and Crafts School, Jeru-
salem, 126

Bialik, Hayim Nahum (1873-1934),
Jewish national poet, 72, 80
Bianchini, Levi, Italian member, Zionist
Commission, 212
BiluSy 24, 54, 125, 127
Bir Salem, Allenby's headquarters, 216-
217, 218

Bistrzcyki, chemist, professor in Berlin
and Freiburg, 49
Black Hundreds, 77, 82
Black Sea, 3, 8

Blum, Leon (1872- ), French states-
man, co-operation with Zionists, 72,

365

Blumenfeld, Joseph, brother-in-law, 133
Bnai MoshCy society, 36, 58
Board of Deputies, organization of as-
similationist Jews, 156
Bols, Gen. Louis Jean (1867-1930) :
Allenby's Chief of Staff, 217; Mili-
tary Governor, Palestine, 254; Pales-
tine development, letter on, 258-259
Boug River, 8, 9

Brandeis, Louis Dembitz (1856-1941),
American jurist and Zionist, 165;
Palestine visit, 249; urged British
protectorate to Balfour, 1 93-1 94
Brandeis group: American Executive,
resigned from, 270 ; Zionist Organiza-
tion, ideas on, 267-268
Brest Litovsk, 8, 9

British Admirality, Weizmann work
for, 1 72-175

British East Africa. See Uganda

INDEX

British Government, partition rejected,
401

British Labor Party, supported Jewish
National Home, 436
British Palestine Committee (1916), 184
Buber, Martin (1878- ), Ha-Scha-

char meeting, spoke at, 51; Hebrew
University, pamphlet on, 136; profes-
sor, Hebrew University in Jerusalem,
63-64, 68

Buchanan, Sir Edward, 185
Bund (Jewish revolutionary labor or-
ganization), 26; power of, 74
Bundistenfresser, 65

Cafe Landolt, meeting place of ex-
. patriate students, 58, 64, 66
'Capitalist category,’’ 300-302
Cecil, Lord Robert (1864- ), Eng-

lish statesman, 72; and Sykes-Picot
Treaty, 191

Central Bureau for the Settlement of
German Jews, work of, 349-359;
Weizmann chairman, 343
Challukkah Jews, 225-231; description
of, 125-126, 128; Elder, Dr. David, in
care of, 226-227, 228 ; Feast of Taber-
nacles, myrtles for, 229-231 ; funds
for, 225-226; Jerusalem, city of, 1317
letters complaining of Zionist Com-
mission, 229
Chaluts, 300

Chalutsim (pioneers), arriving (1919),

251

Chamberlain, Arthur Neville (1869-
1940), British Prime Minister, 402;
Masaryk, reply to, 408; White Paper
(i939)> Weizmann warning against,
409-410

Chankin, Joshua, Palestine, guide, 126-
127, 252

diatzman family, visit with, 77
Chatzman, Vera. See Weizmann, Vera.
Chayes, Peretz, member of the Italian
Zionist Organization, 286-287
Chasan (prayer leader), 4
Cheder (school), 4-5, 10, 19
Cheder meiukcm^ 26

Chekhov, Anton Pavlovich (1860-1904),

13

CMbath Zion (love of Zion), 16, 24, 43,
125 ; Achad Ha-am, criticized by, 36 ;
Wolffsohn, David, leader of, 46
CHcago speech, 343-344

485

Chisin, Chaim, opposition to Lenin, 50
Choveve Zion, 24, 41, 58, 127
Choveve Zion Federation (Odessa Com-
mittee), 37

Churchill, Winston Leonard Spencer
(1874- ), Balfour Declaration in

House of Commons, support of, 290;
Jewish National Home, support prom-
ised, 436-437; Ibn Saud, deal sug-
gested with, 427-428; Weizmann talks
with, 424-425; White Paper (1939),
attack on, 41 1

Churchill White Paper, 290-291 ; terms,
290 ; Zionist Executive acceptance,
290-291

Clayfon Aniline Works, employed
Weizmann, 95, 100

Clayton, Gen. Sir Gilbert F. (1875-
1929), political officer on Allenby’s
staff, 219, 221

Cohen, Benjamin Victor (1894- ),

American lawyer, 73; “battle of the
Mandate,” 279-280
Colonial Office, hostility, 331
Colonization Department, headed by
Arthur Ruppin, 122-123, 127
Committee of Five, 469-470
Congress. See Zionist Congresses.
Congreve, Gen. Sir Walter Norris
(1862-1927), Egypt, Acting High
Commissioner, 250-251
Conjoint Committee : Assimilationists,
English, 156-158; Wolf, Lucien, sec-
retary of, 157-158; Zionism, attitude
toward, 156-158; Zionism, statement
against, 202

Cowen, Joseph (1868-1932), at Balfour
Declaration conference, ; chair-
man, English Zionist Federation, i%2 ;
English member, Zionist Commission,
213

Crewe, Lady, Zionist sympathizer, 161-
162

Cromer, Lord Evelyn Baring (1841-
1917), discussion of El Arish pro-
posal, 91

Daniel Sieff Research Institute: begin-
nings, 446-449; founding of, 341;
opening (1934), 35i; problems, 447-
448; Weizmann’s work in, 361
Danzig, 8, 9

Darmstadt, university at, 3^33? 34

INDEX

486

Deedes, Gen. Sir Wyndham (1883- ),

72, 217; Protocols of Zion, 217-218;
Weizmann, help to, 218, 219, 220, 221

Democratic Fraction, 53 J Aberson, ad-
dress by, 65; anti-Uganda, 86; Wolff-
sohn, attempt to unseat, 112; charac-
ter of, 52; constructive criticism by,
68-69 ; Herzl leadership, opposition to,
81-82; Hebrew University, support
of, 136

Dizengoff, Meir (1861-1936), mayor,
Tel Aviv, 221

Dneiper River, 3, 8

Dreyfus, Charles, arranged meeting
with Balfour for Weizmann, 109-110;
Director, Clayton Aniline Works, 95,
100, 106, 109

Dugdale, Mrs. Blanche E. T., biopa-
pher and niece of Balfour, iii ; friend
of Zionism, 154

Edwards, laboratory steward in Man-
chester 97

Ehrlich, Paul (1854-1915), invited to
head Hebrew University Committee,

Einstein, Albert (1879- ), American

visit for Hebrew University, 266
Eisenberg, Aaron, 24, 25
El Arish proposal, 88-89, 91-92
Elder, Dr. David, English member,
Zionist Commission, 213; problems of
Challukkah Jews, 226-227, 228
“The Elders of Zion,” 107-108
English Zionist Federation: political
committee, 183-184; Weizmann, presi-
dent of, 200-202, 343; Zionism and
the Jewish Futiifej publishers of, 182-

183

English Zionists, Weizmann’s relations

with, 103, ns

Evelina de Rothschild School, Jeru-
salem, 142

Fawzi Kawaki, army defeated, 475
Feast of Tabernacles, Chcdlukkah Jews,
myrtles for, 229-231
Feisal, Emir (1885-1933). Arab leader,

234- 235; Felix Frankfurter, letter to,
245-246; Weizmann agreement with,

235- 236, trip to see, 232-235
Feisal -Weizmann Agreement, 245-247

Feivel, Berthold (1875-1937), writer,
63-64, 67, 68, 72; Zionist leadership,
criticism of, 81-82 ; Ha-Schachar
meeting, spoke at, 51; Hebrew Uni-
versity, pamphlet on, 136
Festivals, religious, 8, 9
FeuillentonistSy 43

Fishman, Jacob, editor, Jezmsh Morning
Journal, 306

Fleg (Flegenheimer), Edmond, writer,

69

Flegenheimer family, 69
Frankfort on the Main, 30
Frankfurter, Felix (1882- ), Ameri-

can jurist, Feisal letter, 245-246 ;
Morgenthau mission, 197
Friedman, Rabbi David Ben Samuel

(1828-1915), 24

Gasparri, Cardinal Pietro (1852-1934),
Vatican point of view, 285-286
Gaster, Dr. Moses (1856-1939), aided
Weizmann in England, 89; at Bal-
four Declaration conference, 188;
head of the English Sephardic com-
munities, 89 ; practical Zionist, 121 ,
secretiveness, 181

Geneva, city of political refuge, 58;

Weizmann in, 49-53, 55"92
Geneva Zionists, Weizmann head of, 59
George V (1865-1936), king of Great
Britain, Weizmann presented to, 213-

214 . .

German Jews, assimilation, 31-33
Germany, anti-Semitism, 3t-32
Gibraltar, Weizmann’s trip to, 196-197
Gimso, Nahum, rabbi of Kalenkovitch,
41

Ginsburg, Asher. See Achad Ha-am.
Ginsburg, Simon, fund raising in Amer-
ica, 266

Goldberg, Isaac (1860-1935), contrib-
uted money for Hebrew University
grounds, 137

Gordon, Sir Evans, English statesman,
discussed Uganda with Weizmann,
90-91

Gouraud, Gen. Henry Joseph Eugene
1867- ), Palestine, frontier ques-

tion, 289

Graham, Sir Ronald (1870- ), 185

Greenberg, Leopold J. (1861-193^),
editor, London Jewish Chronicle, un-
familiar with Russian Jewry, 53, 89;

INDEX

hostility to Weizmatm, 89; Uganda
proposal, responsibility for, 90 ; Weiz-
mann kept from London Zionists, 116
Grey, Sir Edward (1862-1933), 178
Grey Hill, Lady, 137
Greshdanin, anti-Semitic newspaper, 77
Gurion, Ben, opposition to Weizmatm,
442

Gymnasium, Jaffa, 126

Haas, Jacob de (1872-1937), Brandeis’
Zionist mentor, 248-249
Haber, Fritz (1868-1934), chemist, ex-
perience in exile, 350, 352-354
Hadassah (American Women’s Zionist
Organization), 349
Haganah, defense organization, 393
Haifa, city of Palestine, 125
Halifax, Lord, Edward F. L. Wood
(1881- ), British Foreign Secre-

tary, 402 ; Mandate rights, advised
Weizmann to renounce, 404; Patria,

403

Halpern, George, manager, Jewish
Colonial Trust, 25
Ha-Melits, newspaper, 27
Hantke, Arthur (1874- ), Zionist

lawyer, 35

Harrison, Earl, Palestine report to
President Truman, 441
Harvey, Oliver, Palestine chief censor,
229

Ha-Schachar, newspaper, 27
Ha-Schachar (The Dawn), first Zionist
society in Switzerland, 51
Haskallah (enlightenment), 5-6
Hatikvah (Jewish national anthem), 12
Havlagah policy, 393
Haycraft Report, 281
Ha-Zephirah, Warsaw, Nahum Soko-
low, editor, 27, 78-79
Hebrew textbooks, 5
Hebrew University: beginnings of, 136-
141; Democratic Fraction’s support
of, 136; faculty, 315-316; foundation
laid, 236-237 ; Herzl’s support of, 136 ;
need for, 68; opening ceremony, con-
ducted by Lord Balfour, 317-320,
criticized, 323-324; pamphlet on, 136;
progress of, 3i5“3i7; site selected,
137; Vienna Congress (1913)7 on
agenda of, 137

Hebron, city of Palestine, 125
Heldentenor, 47

487

Herzl, Theodor (1860-1904), founder of
modern Zionism, 25; Achad Ha-am,
criticism of, 36; death of, Demo-
cratic Fraction, opposition of, 81-82;
description of, 44, 45; diplomatic ac-
tivity, 52, 82-83; El Arish, negotia-
tions for, 91 ; greatness of, 54; Jewish
University, support of, 68 ; London
Congress (1900), 56-57; opposition
to, 52-53; political Zionism of, 56-57,
59; published Der Judenstaaf (The
Jewish State), 43-44; Russian Jewry,
unfamiliar with, 53 ; Uganda offer, ad-
dress on, 83-84 ; Uganda proposal,
opposition to, 83-88; Uganda, urged
as substitute for Palestine, 54; un-
realism of, 82 ; Ussishkin’s revolt
against, 58-59; Von Plehve, failure
of interview with, 82-83 ; Zionism, ap-
proach and contribution to, 44-46, 49 ;
Zionism, beginnings of, 28, 35; Zion-
ist student groups, early support from,
43

Hildesheimer, Hirsch (1855-1910), Ber-
lin rabbi, 40

Hilfsverein der Deutschen Juden, 69, 142

Hirsch, Baron Maurice de (1831-1896),

13

“Historic connection,” 280

“Historic right,” 280

Hitler, Adolf (1889-1945), advent to
power, 349

Hotel Zentrum, Berlin, student meet-
ings, 37

Ibn Saud (1880- ), King of Saudi

Arabia : Churchill’s suggested deal
with, 427; Col. Hoskins’ story, 432-
433

I. G. Farbenindustrie, Weizmann patent
bought by, 56

Ilyinsky, manager, Moscow dyeing
plant, 48

Immigration, Palestine closed to, 417

Israel : recognition of, 479 ; U. S. recog-
nition of, 478; Weizmann, President,
Provisional Council of State, 479

LT.O. See Jewish Territorial Organiza-
tion

Ittleson, Abram, editor, Rassviet, 68

Jabotinsky, Vladimir (1880-1940), a
founder of Jewish Legion of World
War I, founder of Revisionist Party

INDEX

488

and New Zionist Organization, 63,
167-168; Revisionist Party founded,
326; Weizmann and, 62, 63, 167-168,
227-228; 326-327, 337-340; Zionist
executive, resignation from, 326 ;
Zionist Organization, political officer
of, 168

Jacobson, Victor (1869-1934), 35, 72;
Anglo-Palestine Bank, Beyrouth, di-
rector of, 125 ; Presidium, member of,
122

Jaffa, city of Palestine, 125
Japanese student in Manchester, 102-103
Jerusalem, city of Challukkah, 131; city
of Palestine, 125

Jewish Agency, 159, 304-314; Actions
Committee approved idea of, 307 ;
Constituent Assembly, first meeting
(1929), 3 1 3-3 14; met Cabinet Com-
mittee on Palestine policy, 334; oppo-
sition to, 306, 308-310; opposition
overcome, 308-311 ; proposed, 261 ;
reasons for, 304-306; supporters of,
306

Jewish Brigade, 425
Jewish centers of learning, lost, 356
Jewish Colonial Trust, founded (1897),
41, 76; Halpern manager of, 25;
Weizmann^s aid to, 342-343
Jewish fighting forces: Churchill dis-
cussion of, 424-425; Jewish Legion,
Zionist official opposition to, 169; mi-
litia, 470; success of, 475
Jewish National Council, 452
Jewish National Fund: foundation, 58;
inadequacy of, 127

Jewish National Homeland, British offi-
cials, attitude toward, 1 50-154
Jewish National Library, foundation,
128

Jewish spiritual and economic tragedy,
64-66

Jewish State: agriculture, 463-464;
constitution, 461 ; defense of, 460-461 ;
education, 462; finances, 461; foreign
relations, 464-465 ; immigration, 461 ;
industrialization, 462-463; justice, 461-
462; organization, problems of, 400-
466; proclamation of, 478; religion,
464

Jewish Territorial Organization: dis-
solved, 160; doomed to failure, 114-
115; founded, 88

Jews, English : anti-Zionist statement on
Palestine, 156; assimilationism, 156-
161, 163; Zionism, attitude toward,
115-116, 176; Zionists, attitude of, 94
Jews, German: assimilationism, 31-33;
inferiority, sense of, 32 ; Russian
Jews, attitude toward, 40; scientists,
condition of under Hitler, 350-357;
urbanization of, in Palestine, 357,
358-360

Jews, Palestine, early history of, 123
Jews, rich: anti-Zionist, 152; phi-
lanthropy of, 75 ; Zionism, attitude
toward, 75

Jews, Russian, 3-4, 6, 7; Actions Com-
mittee members quit congress meet-
ing, 87-88 ; assimilationism, 27-28,
35, 41, 42, S3, 77; contrast between
Zionist and revolutionary movements,
77; “dark years,” 16; economic
problems, 67; education, 10, 14, 29,
63; emigration, 69, 85; “eternal

student type,” 37; German Jews’
attitude toward, 40; ghetto, 6, 7;
Haskallah, 5-6; Herzl, unfamiliarity
with, 53; intelligentsia, 41, 42; lead-
ers anti-Ugandist, 85 ; natural science,
ignorance of, 6; Pale of Settlement,
4, 6, 74-75; peasants, relations with,
10 ; realism of, 45 ; repression of, 74-
75 j 77 > 81 ; in Revolution, 52 ; rich,
34. 75 ; student colonies, 34, 35 ; Zion-
ist ideas, ii

Johnston, Sir Harry (1858-1927), Eng-
lish explorer, 89-90

Jouvenel, Henry de (1876-1935), French
journalist, Zionist work converted to
admiration, 366-367
Jude, Der, Zionist periodical, 68
Judennot (Jewish need), 84
Judisch-Russisch W issenschaftliches
Verein (Jewish-Russian Scientific
Society), 35, 36
Judische Hochschule, 68
Judische Hochschule, Die, pamphlet on
Hebrew University, 136
Judische Verlag, first Zionist publishing
house, 68

Kadimah, Zionist students of Vienna, 43
Kalenkovitch, Russia, 41
Kaplan, Eliezer, Jewislx Agency treas-
urer, 300

Karlin, part of Pinsk, 24

INDEX

Kattowitz Conference, 24, 46
Keren Hayesod (Palestine Foundation
Fund), established in U.S., Samuel
Untermeyer, president, 269-270; Nai-
ditch a founder of, 25; non-Zionist
American aid to, 311-312; Weizmann’s
European tour for, 288-289
Kerr, Philip Henry, Marquis of Lothian,
(1882-1904), English statesman, 72;
Jewish Palestine a bridge, 179
Kharkov, Russia, 41
Kiev, Russia, 41

Kisch, Col. Fred, Zionist work in Pales-
tine, 295-297

Kishinev (city), anti-Ugandist, Congress
delegates, 87

Kishinev pogrom (1903), I7, 54 79-8o;

effect on Jewish world, 79-82
Klimker, Dr., 124, 125
Klnorre, von, Berlin professor, 48
Kohan-Bemstein : anti-Ugandist, 85 ;

called on de Rothschild, 47
Kornienko, chemistry teacher, Pinsk,
21, 22

Kremenetzky, Johann (1850-1934), chal-
lenged Weizmann on practical Zion-
ism, 123- 124

Krushevan, Paul, editor, BesserabetSy 77
Kunin, student, 38, 39

Labor Government, repudiated Labor
Party promises, 439-440
Landau, Mark Aleksandrovich
(1888- ), 40

Lansdowne, iLord (1845-1927), letter
offering Uganda, 83-84
Lawrence, Thomas Edward (1888-
1935), British officer, 234-235; leader
of Arab revolt in World War I, 72
League of Nations powers, Weizmann
and,

Lenin, Nikolai (Vladimir Ilich Ulya-
nov) (1870-1924), contempt for Zion-
ists, 50

Lestschinsky, Jacob (1876- ), 68

Levi, Sylvain (1863-1935), French mem-
ber, Zionist Commisison, 212; Peace
Conference speech, 243-244
Levin, Schmarya (1867-1935), 35 » 67,
72; Achad Ha-am criticized by, 62;
America, visits to with Weizmann,
62-63; American Provisional Execu-
tive Committee for Zionist Affairs,
member of, 165; anti-Ugandist, 85;

489

called great Maggid, 62 ; Judisch-Rus-
sisch WissenschaftUches Verein^ mem-
ber of, 61-63; Presidium, member of,
122; Technikum, a founder of, 142
Levys, Manchester family Weizmann
lodged with, 100
Lewin-Epstein, 197

Lichenstein, Abram, opposition to Lenin,

50

Lipsky, Louis (1876- ), editor, '‘Mac-

cabean Monthly,^' 73; president, Zion-
ist Organization of America, 262-263
Lloyd, Lord George Ambrose (1897-
1941), British Colonial Secretary, re-
fused Patria landing, 403
Lloyd, George, David (1863-1944),
English statesman: Balfour Declara-
tion in memoirs, 211-212; Jewish
Homeland, advocacy of, 150; War
Memories j Weizmann mentioned in,
149-150; Weizmann, meetings with,
149, 150, 238-239

Loewe, Dr. Heinrich, Hebrew Univer-
sity librarian, 315-316
London Jewish Chronicle^ Leopold
Greenberg, editor, 53, 89
Lurias family, 25

MacDonald, James Ramsay (1866-
1937) : Colonial Office policy discus-
sion, 332-333; Palestine High Com-
missioner, Weizmann consulted about,
335; Palestine Mandate, support of,
283-284

MacDonald, Malcolm (1901- ), Co-

lonial Secretary, Tripartite Confer-
ence, conducted by, 402 ; White Paper
(i939)» defense of, 412
Macdonogh, General, 72 ; introduced
Col. Fred Kisch to Weizmann, 295
Mack, Julian, memorandum of American
Zionist Executive, 267
Magnes, Judah Leon (1877- ),

American Zionist, 156
Maher, Aly, Egyptian statesman, 408
Maimonides (Mose ben Maimon 1135-

1204), 13, 14

Manchester, Wrizmann in, 95-120
Manchester Guardian^ C P. Scott,
editor, 148

Manchester University, Weizmann pro-
moted, 133

Manchester Zionist Society, futility of,
103-104

INDEX

490

Mandates Commission, White Paper
(1939), rejection of, 413-414
Mandelstamm, Max Emanuel (1839-
1912), professor in Kiev, 60
Manhattan Opera House, New York, 18
Mapu (Abraham Ben Yekuthiel, 1808-
1867), Hebrew novelist, 13
Marks, Simon (1888- ), English

Zionist, 106, 132

Marmorek, Alexander (1865-1923),
physician, imfamiliar with Russian
Jewry, 53

Marshall, Gen. George Catlett ( 1880- ) ,
Chief of Staff, U. S. Army, Weizmann
plea to, 431

Marshall, Louis (1856-1929), American
lawyer and Zionist, 73, I59, 269; in-
fluence with non-Zionists, 308-309
Masaryk, Jan Garrigue (1886-1948),
407-408; Chamberlain, Czechoslovakia
betrayal, 40S

Mashgiach (overseer), 31
Maskil, 14 24

Masliansky, Zvi Hirsch (1856- ),

folk orator, 25, 27

Massel, Joseph, Manchester Zionist, 95,
100, 104
May Laws, 17

Meinhertzhagen, Col. Richard (1878- ) ,

72; aided Zionists, 180-181; Egypt,
political officer in, 250-251; in Pales-
tine administration, 254
Melamed (teacher), 26
Messiah, ii

Milner, Lord Alfred (1854-1925), fa-
vored Palestine Mandate, 283-284 ;
sympathetic to Zionism, 178-179
Minsk, description, 3
Mi::ra€hi (religious Zionists), 52, 86
Mohilever, Samuel (1824-1898), 27
Mond, Sir Alfred (1868-1930), 264
Montagu, Edwin Samuel (1879-1924),
anti-Zionist, 152; Balfour Declaration,
speech against Foreign Office text,
206 ; blocked Political Committee draft
of British statement on Palestine in
War Cabinet, 204; President, Anglo-
Jewish Association, 156; Weizmann’ s
rebuttal of, 20S, Zionists, attitude
toward, 154

Montefiore, Claude Joseph (1858-1938),
religious leader, 157
Montefiore, Sir Francis Abraham (1860-
1935), nephew of Sir Moses, 45

Montefiore, Sir Moses Haim (1784-
1885), 7; early interest in Palestine,

45

Morgenthau, Henry (1865- ), Amer-

ican diplomat: Turkey, mission to,
195- 199, Weizmann stops, 196
Moscow, Weizmann visits, 48
Moshe, Itchie, uncle of Weizmann,^ 12
Mossinsohn, Dr. Ben-Zion, fund-raising
in America, 266
Motelle, See Motol

Motol, Russia, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, 10, 14 I5,
17, 22, 23 ; Zionism in, 41
Motol synagogue, Chicago, 18
Motzkin, Leo (1867-1933), 35, 37, 60;
a founder of Democratic Fraction,
60-61, 67; headed Berlin Zionists, 59;
Palestine colonies, report on, 61
Moyne, Lord, Walter Edward Guinness
(1880-1944), assassination, 437-438
Mozyr, Russia, 41

Mussolini, Benito (1883-1945), conver-
sations with Weizmann, 369-370, 37i-

372

Musa Kazim Pasha, 280

Nachfasyl (night shelter), 86
Naiditch, Isaac (1868- ), Palestine

Foundation Fund, a founder of, 25,

Nathan, Sir Frederick Lewis (1861-

1933), 172

Nathan, Paul, director, Hilfsverein, 62,

143

Negev, region of Palestine, 457
“New Synagogue,” Motol, 4
New York, Manhattan Opera House, 18
New York, Weizmann reception, 266-
267

New Zionist Organization. See Revision-
ist Party

Newspapers, British, opposition to
Palestine Mandate, 280, 283
Nicholas II (1868-1918), czar of Russia,
33

Nissan, Reb, peddler of religious ob-
jects, 40

Nordau, Max Simon (1849-1923), au-
thor: assimilated Jews, criticism of,
47 ; called on de Rothschild, 48 ;
concept of anti-Semitism, 47; London
Congress, 57; Max Nordau Plan, 47;
Russian Jewry, unfamiliar with, 53;

INDEX

491

Uganda speech, 86, 87; Western Zion-
ist leader, 46-48, 63
Northcliffe, Lord (1865-1922), British
newspaper publisher, P^estine opin-
ions, 282-283

Northcliffe papers, opposition to Pales-
tine Mandate, 280, 283
Novoye Vremya, anti-Semitic news-
paper, 77

Okhram (Russian secret police), 40
'‘Old Synagogue,” Motol, 4
Ormsby-Gore, Major; Balfour Declar-
ation, support of, 290; Weizmann’s
letter criticizing Palestine administra-
tion, 389-393; Weizmann’s letter on
military value of Palestine, 396 ;
Zionist Commission, liaison officer to
213, 214, 215, 216

"Outline of Program for the Jewish
Resettlement of Palestine in Accord-
ance with the Aspirations of the Zion-
ist Movement,” 186-187

Pale of Settlement, 4, 6, 18, 23, 32; Jews
restive, 74-75; pogroms, 80-81; self-
defense groups, 80
Palestine: agricultural colonization,
backbone of, 277-278 ; agricultural pro-
gram, 298-299 ; Arab attacks, 397, 470,
481; Arab state of, 406; Balfour’s,
tour of, 320-322; Britain’s responsi-
bility for, 177; British protectorate,
American support of, 193-194; chem-
ical research, 444-446; closed to im-
migration, 417; colonies, 125-126;
Committee of Five, refused entry, 470;
description, 125-127 ; finances, 127 ;
French interest in, 188-189; Hebrew
language revival, 128; international
intrigue, 142-143; invasion, danger of,
430-431; Jewish tradition in Russia,
II ; land purchases, 253; land specula-
tion, 301-302; legislative council pro-
posM, 379-381 ; mandate, value of,
177-178; Montefiore, Sir Moses, early
interest in, 45; Motzkin’s report on
colonies in, 61 ; need for pioneer spirit,
126, 127 ; occupation government,

hostility of, 242, 250-251; Odessa
Committee supervised work in, 37;
partition of, 3^5-387; Pinsk neighbors
in, 24, 131; progress in (1906-1914),
128-129; Russian Jews’ attitude to-

ward, II ; schools, 126, 142-143 ; scien-
tific center, 444 ; security imder United
Nations, 470-471 ; traveling conditions,
126; Turkish authority in, 26-27; un-
employment in, 294, 303, 328 ; Vatican
interest, 190; wartime changes, 438-
439; Weizmann’s move to, 33; work-
ers, 363-364

Palestine, Jewish: British Cabinefs,
attitude toward, 177; British Govern-
ment’s draft of statement on, 203;
danger from French, 1 90-1 91 ; inter-
national problems, 189; safeguard to
England, 192

Palestine Economic Corporation, non-
Zionist Americans’ aid to, 312
Palestine Electric Corporation, Pinchas
Rutenberg, manager, 362
Palestine Mandate: Arab opposition to,
280; duality idea of, 325-326; Parlia-
ment, opposition in, 280, 289-290 ;
ratification struggle, 279-293 ; Spanish
support, 292; Vatican opposition to,
284-286

Palestine Office, Zionist Organization,
underfinanced, 127

Palestine problem, referred to United
Nations, 452

Palestine riots: in 1920, 254-258; Jabo-
tinsky arrested, 255; Times story on,
256; in 1929, 331; in 1936, 3S1-383;
H, J. Simpson account of, 382
Palestine Weekly^ 184
Paris in World War I, 147-148
Parliament, opposition to Palestine M[an-
date, 280, 289-290

Partition; first broached to Weizmann,
385; rejected by British government,
401; White Paper (i937) on, 3^
389; Zionist Congress divided over,
386-387; Zionist Congress resolution
on, 387

Passfield, Lord, Sidney James Webb
(1859- British Colonial Secretary,

331

Passfield White Paper, 332, 333; licra-
Jewish protests, 333; resignations in
protest of, 333 ; reversal of policy, 335
Passover, festival of, 8
Patria, 402-403

Peace Conference, Paris, 243-245 ; Soko-
low’s speech at, 243; Sylvain Levi’s
speech at, 243-244; Weizmann’s speech
at, 243, 244-245

INDEX

49^

Peel Commission: members of, 383;
Palestine partition suggested, 385-386 ;
Weizmann’s evidence before, 383-385
Peel Report, 3S8-389
Pelusian Plain (Sinai Desert), 92
Percy, Lord Henry Algernon George
(1871-1909), English statesman, 89
Perkin, Professor William Henry, aided
Weizmann at Manchester University,
95-96, 99, 100, loi, 102, 103, 134, 135
Perkin, Sir William Henry, 95-96
Permanent Mandates Commission, 375-
378; members of, 376-378; TheodoH,
Cornit, opposition to Zionist work,

370571

Perffianens-Auschuss, Zionist Congress
committee, 45

Pevsner, Samuel, work in Haifa, 130-
132

Pfimgstadt, Jewish boarding school, 30-

Philby, St John (1885- ), 427-428
“Phony war,’^ 418

Pickles, Weizmann laboratory assistant,
99

Picot, Georges, French government
official, 188; position on Jewish Pales-
tine, 190
Pina River, 3, 8

Pinchon, Stephen Jean Marie (1857-

1933), 185

Pinnes, Reb Yechiel, 24
Pinsk, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 26, 33, 77;
Jewish families of, 41; schooldays of
Weizmann in, 16-28; Weizmann a
delegate from, 46; Weizmann home-
sick for, 32; Zionism in, 24-26
Pinsker, Leon (1821-1891), 43
PinsH, David (1872- ), author, 27

Plehve, Wenzel von (1846-1^4), failure
of Herzl’s interview with, 82-83;
Kishinev pogrom, 80 ; repressive
measures toward Jews, 81; Russian
Minister of Interior, 63
Plekhanov, Georgi Valentinovich (1857-
1918), contempt for Zionists, 50
Plumer, Herbert Charles (1857-1932),
Palestine High Commissioner, 328-

329

Poale Zion, Zionism^s left wing, 52
Pobiedonostsev, Procurator, Holy Syn-
od, anti-Semitism a policy, 82
Pogroms, 17-18; Kishinev, 79-82; Pales-
tine (1920), 254-258; Palestine

(1929), 331; Palestine (1936), 381-

383

Polish landowners, exploitation by, 10
Political Committee, Zionist Organiza-
tion : draft of British Government
statement on Jewish Palestine sub-
mitted to Foreign Office and War
Cabinet, 203-204
Pripet River, 3

“Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” 107-
108; Weizmann introduced to, 217-
218

Psuschima, battle of, 102- 103
Purim, festival of, 8, 40

Rappaport, Solomon Seinwil (S. Ansky
1863-1920), opposition to Lenin, 50
Rathenau, Walter, (1867-1922), German
statesman, 288

Reading, Rufus Daniel Isaacs, Lord
(1860-1935), chairman, Palestine Elec-
tric Corporation, 159
Re(d Gyinnasium, Pinsk, 18-19, 29
Rebhi (teacher), 4-5, n, 12, 19
Rehovoth, 25
Revisionist Party, 326
Revolutionaries, contempt for Jewish
nationalism, 50

Roosevelt, Franklin Delano (1882-
1945) » H. S. President, support of
Jewish National Home, 435
Rosenwald, Julius (1862-1932), anti-
Zionist, 305

Rosh Hashanah (New Year), 9
Rothenberg, Morris (1885- ), Amer-

ican judge and Zionist, 73; favored
Jewish Agency, 306-307
Rothschild, Charles, friendly to Zion-
ists, 161

Rothschild, Dorothy, wife of James,
aided Zionists, i6o, 161
Rothschild, Baron Edmond James de
(1845-1934) : Achad Ha-am, criti-
cism of, 36 ; colonies, reform of, 47~48 ;
colonist, effects of generosity to, 126,
127; description of, 138; generosity
of, 138; Hebrew University, discus-
sion with Weizmann, I37-I39, I4i‘>
Zionism, converted to, 128; Zionism
and the Jewish Future, paid cost of,
183; Zionist movement, distrust of,

138-139

Rothschild, James de, at Balfour Declar-
ation conference, 188; represented

INDEX

493

father’s interests in work with Zionist
Commission, 213

Rothschild, Jessica, wife of Charles,
aided Zionists, 161

Rothschild, Leopold, anti-Zionist, 161
Rothschild, Mrs. Leopold, anti-Zionist,

III

Rothschild, Nathaniel, friendly to Zion-
ists, 161

Rothschild, Lord Walter: aided Zion-
ists, 16 1 ; at Balfour Declaration con-
ference, 188 ; Balfour Declaration
addressed to, 161, 208
Rothschild Hospital, Jerusalem, 317
Rumford, Kennerly, 196
Ruppin, Arthur (1876-1943), agrono-
mist and sociologist, 73; colonization,
role in, 129-130, 132, 297-299; criti-
cism, unjustified, 129- 130; Hebrew
University, site for, 137 ; Palestine
Colonization Department, head of,
122-123, 127; Tel Aviv, planning of,
130; Zionist work, three pillars of,

295

Russia: anti-Semitism, 31; conditions
in (1904), 105; Duma, 105; education,
10, 18-19, 20, 29; exploitation, 10;
liberalism, 16-17 ; military service, 33 ;
Minsk province, 3; Okhrana (secret
police), 40; Pale of Settlement, 4, 6,
18, 77; pogroms, 79-81, 105, 136; rela-
tions between Jews and non-Jews, 77;
Weizmann, dislike for, 29, 149
See also Jews, Russian
Russian Revolution, Jews in, 52
Russo-Japanese War, 102-103
Rutenberg, Pinchas (1879-1942), 167;
Jewish Legion, World War I, a
founder, 167, 168-169; land scheme,
Palestine, 362-363 ; Palestine, work in,
362; Weizmann and, 167, 168-170
Rutenberg Concessions, 283
Rutherford, Lord Ernest (1871-1937),
professor, Manchester University, 118-
I19

Sacher, Harry (1881- ), at Balfour
Declaration conference, 188; English
Zionist, 106, 1 16; on Mcmchesier

Guardian f 132

Safed, city of Palestine,^ 125
Said, Nuri, Iraqi Premier, 408
Samuel, Herbert Louis (1^0- ), ad-

ministration a disappointment, 275;

aided Zionists, 159; at Balfour Declar-
ation conference, 188; English states-
man, 149, 150; High Commissioner,
resignation as, 328; Palestine admin-
istration advisor, 254; Palestine High
Commissioner, :^3

San Remo, Italy, Allied Conference,
259-261 ; Balfour Declaration con-
firmed, 260

Schiff, Jacob Henry (1847-19:^), 62
Schuster, Sir Arthur (1851-1934), pro-
fessor at Manchester University, 113,
116-117

Schuster, Lady, friend of Mrs. Weiz-
mann, 113-114, I 17

Scientists, rejection of Palestine, 354-
355

Scott, Charles Prestwich (1846-1932),
editor, Manchester Guardian, 148-150;
helped Weizmann meet government
ofiicials, 179

S’forim, Mendele Mocher, author, 27
Shapiro, Abraham, 252
Shaw Commission, 332
Shertok, Moshe (1894- ), Foreign
Minister, Israel, 25 ; represented Jews
at UN, 452, 457
Shertok family, 25
Shevuoth (Pentecost), 8
Shirirow, wealthy Jew, subsidized Aber-
son, 65

Shochat, Manya Wilbushevitch, 124, 125
Sholom Aleichem (Solomon Rabino-
witz, 1859-1916), author, 27
Shtadlonim (men of wealth and influ-
ence), 17, 42

Shuckburgh, Sir John, permanent Untfer
Secretary for the Colonies, Weizmann
letter on government indifference to
partition, 394-395, 39^

Sidebotham, Herbert ( 1 872-1940 ) ,
English journalist, 162; publicize
Jewish Palestine, 184
Sieff, Israel Moses (1889- ), English

member, Zionist Commission, 213 ;
English Zionist, 106, 132
Silver, Dr. Abba Hillel (1893- ),
American Zionist leader, 442; repre-
saited Jews at UN, 452, 457
Simon, James (1851-1932), director,
Hilfsverein, 143

Simon, Leon (1881- ), London Zionist,
116 ; Zionist Commission, English
member, 213

494

INDEX

Simpson Report, 332
Smolenskin, Peretz (1842-1885), He-
brew novelist, 27

Smuts, Jan Christian (1870- ), South
African soldier and statesman, 72 ;
Weizmann, interview with, 159
Socialist Zionist Party, Syrkin a
founder, 38

Sokolow, Nahum (1861-1936), at Bal-
four Declaration conference, 188;
editor, Ha-Zephiraky Warsaw, 77--79;
Peace Conference speech, 243; polit-
ical negotiations, 190; Zionist Organi-
zation, president of, 339
Soskin, Zelig, 35

South Africa, tour for Zionist Funds,

343, 34^-348

Speculation in land, Palestine, 301-302
Sfamtischy 58

Steed, Henry Wickham (1871- ),

editor, Times ^ London: annoyed by
anti-Zionists, 179

Stein, Leonard, anti-Mandate arguments,
answer to, 281 ; fund-raising, America,
266; secretary, Zionist Organization,
162

Steinschneider, Moritz (1816-1907),
philosopher, 40

Storrs, Col. Ronald (1881- ), 220
Student groups, strength in universities,
43

Snkkoth/icstivil of, 8
Switzerland, 144- 145; crossroad of
Europe’s revolutionary forces, 50 ;
Weizmann’s missionary work in, 70;
Weizmann’s move to, 35
Sykes, Sir Mark (1879-1919), Chief
Secretary, War Cabinet, 181 ; at Bal-
four Declaration conference, 188 ;
Palestine, Jewish, consideration of in-
ternational problems, 189 ; Zionists, aid
to, 1 80-1 81 ; Zionist Commission, or-
ganization of, 213-214; Zionist pro-
gram (1917), memorandum of, 186-
187

Sykes-Picot Treaty, 188, 190, 191 ;
terms of, 191, 194

Syrkin, Nachman (1867-1924), 35, 37;
Lenin, opposition of, 50 ; Socialist
Zionist Party, a founder of, 38; Von
Plehve interview, criticism of, 83
Szold, Henrietta (1860-1945), founder,
Hadassah, 349-350

Tabernacles. See Sukkoth
Talmud, Babylonian, 5
Tamarschenko, student, 39
Tchinovniks (officials), 20
Technikum, Haifa, 128; Achad Ha-am,
a founder, 142; German language,
arguments for, 143; Germany, under
protection of, 143; Hilfsverem, sup-
port withdrawn, 144; language of,
fight over, 142-144; Levin, Shmarya,
a founder of, 142; Zionist Organiza-
tion, support of, 144
“Temporary Legislation Affecting the
Jews” enacted in 1882, 17
Temporary Truce, 47^

Theodoli, Count, Italian member Man-
dates Commission, 370
Thorn, 9

Tiberias, city of Palestine, 125
Tikvah, Petach, 252
Times f answered Conjoint Committee
attack, 202

Tolstoi, Count Lev Nikolaevich (1828-
1910), 13, 42

Tom, laboratory boy in Manchester, 97
Torah, 15

Tripartite Conference, 401-402, 403-404,
405-406

Trotsky, Leon (Lev Davydovich Bron-
stein, 1877-1940), contempt for Zion-
ists, 50

Truman, Harry S. (1B84- ), Weiz-

mann and, 458-459, 472, 480-481
“Truth from Palestine” (Achad Ha-
am), 36

Tschlenow, Yechiel (1864-1918), active
in Bnai Moshe, 60 ; called on de Roth-
schild, 47 ; influenced by Achad
Ha-am, 60; member of Presidium,
122; physician, 45, 68
Turkish Government, intermediary to
.Arabs, 372-374

Uganda, proposal, 83-89 ; argument
against, 86; argument for, 86; offer
rejected, 88; opposition to proposal,
83-88

United Jewish Front, 156
United Nations, trusteeship proposed,
472; voted Jewish state, 459
United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine, 452-454; Palestine, entry re-
fused, 470; Weizmann testimony be-
fore, 452-456

INDEX

495

United States, arms embargo, 471 ;
Israel recognized, 478; policy reversal,
472

University of Geneva, Weizmann in-
structor at, 40, 55

University of Montpellier, strong Zion-
ist student group, 43
University of Paris, strong Zionist
student group, 43

Untermyer, Samuel (1858-1940), arbi-
trated American Zionist split, 269 ;
Keren Hayesod, president, 270
“Usher” Ginsburg. See Achad Ha-am
Ussishkin, Menachem Mendel (1863-
1941), 45, 47; anti-Ugandist, 85;
fund raising, America, 266; Jewish
National Fund, president of, 327; in
London, 59, 60; political leader of
Russian Jews, 58-60; Zionist Organ-
ization Presidium, member of, 122;
Weizmann’s leadership, criticism of,
327 ; Zionist Executive, resignation
from, 327

Vaad Leumi (Jewish National Council),
452

Vatican, opposition to Palestine Man-
date, 284-286; Palestine, interest in,
190

Verein, 38
Vereins-Meier, 60

Vilna, Russia, 41 ; Montefiore, Sir
Moses, welcome of, 7
Vistula River, 8

Volcani, Elazari, head. Agricultural
Experimental Station, Rehovoth, 299
Volga, 10

Wagner, Cosima (1837-1930), attitude
toward Jews, 153
Wailing Wall, 13

Wallace, Henry Agard (1888- ), sup-

ported Weizmann rubber process, 429
War Cabinet, text, Balfour Declaration,
206; Wilson support of text, 208
Warburg, Felix Moritz (1871-1937),
73; influence on non-Zionists, 309-31 1
Warburg, Otto (1859-1938), chairman.
Presidium, 122 ; chairman, Zionist Or-
ganization Council, 1 12
Warsaw, 9

Wauchope, Sir Arthur Grenfell (1874-
), High Commissioner, Palestine,
335; legislative council proposal, 379-

381; Weizmann letter on riot report,
394; Weizmaim’s tribute to, 344-345
Wedgwood, Josiah C. (1872-1943),
English statesman, 150
Weingartner, Felix von (1863-1942),
symphony conductor, Berlin, 40
Weisgal, Meyer W., 343 ; active in
founding Weizmann Institute of Sci-
ence, 449

Weizmann, Anna, lived with Chaim in
Manchester, 114

Weizmann, Benjamin (1907- ), ar-

tillery battalion, enlistment in, 416;
marriage, 421; military service, 421;
son of Chaim, 113

Weizmann, Chaim (1874- ), Zionist

statesman :

Allied victory, faith in, 164-165
American Zionists, relations with,
247-250

Arrest in Russia, 75-77
Birthplace, 3-4
British citizen, 120
Central Bureau for the Settlement
of German Jews, chairman of,
343

Chemistry, activity in:
adviser, Ministry of Supply, 422
biochemistry, 133- 134
discovery, 48
English lectures, loi
frustrations in, America, World
War II, 428-430

Nobele, contract for chemical dis-.
covery, 172

patent sale, I. G. Farbenindustrie, 56
research, Manchester, 99; in World
War II, 422-424; for Qayton
Aniline Works, 95, 100
return to, London, 340-342
Childhood, 4-7, IL I3, 16, 28
Conflict between Zionism and career,
55, 56, 67-68, 74, 103
Early recognition, 49
Education :

Berlin, 37-3^

Darmstadt, 30-33

deficiencies in, 67

doctorate, study in Freiburg, 55

graduation, summa cum laude, 55

holidays, 40

Motol, 4-6, 10

Pinsk, 16-28

student life, Berlin, 34-40

INDEX

496

Weizinaim, Chaim — Continued
England, life in, 72-73? 93-120
English Zionist Federation, president
of, 200, 343
Family, 6-7, 11-13, 28
Benjamin, first child born, 113
holidays with, 329
marriage, 112

Michael, second child born, 174
sisters and brother, helped educate,

100,113,114

sons enlist in British military, 416
Friendships, 28-40, 116-119
Israel, presidency of, acceptance, 480
Jewish Agency (1935)? president of,
361, protest resignation, 333
Jews, western, difficulty with, 154-155
Languages ;

English, 94, 97, 98, 99
German, 10, 33
Russian, 10

Leadership, 337-339? 442-443
Letters :

to Brandeis, 165, 193-194
to Churchill, 437-438
to Lady Crewe, 161
to Frankfurter, 204
to Kerr, 179, 205
to Ormsby-Gore, 389-393? 396
to Sacher, 163
to Scott, 177

to Shuckburgh, 394-395? 39^
to Truman, 474? 477-478
to Wauchope, 394
to Zangwill, 160
Life pattern, 35-36, 70
London, move to, 72-73, 174
Married, 71, 73, 112
Migrants, help to, 69
Military service, 33-34
Nationality, concept of, 32
Palestine, first visit to, 124-131
Palestine, refused entry, 250-251
Practical Zionism, 121-122
Propaganda technique, 42
Russian military power, opinion of,
164

Sorbonne, speech at, 367-368
Switzerland, marooned in, by war,
146-147

Sylvain Levi speech, rebuttal of, 244-

245

Weizmann, Chaim — Continued
Teaching activity:
full professorship, disappointment at
not receiving, 1 19, 134-135
Geneva, 55

Manchester, 101-102, 132-133
Pfungstadt, 30-33
Theater, interest in, 39-40
Truman, President, letter requesting
recognition of Israel, 477-478
Uganda offer investigation in Eng-
land, 89-91

Uganda proposal, speech against, 86
United Nations Special Committee on
Palestine, testimony before, 452-

456

University Committee, organization
of, 137

War work, payment for, 174
Wauchope, Sir Arthur, letter on riot
report, 394

Youth Aliy ah, president of, 343
Zionism, approach to, 45
Zionism, political and practical, plea
for synthesis of, 122
Zionist activities, return to, 104-106,
109

Zionist Congress (1897), missed first,
49

Zionist Commission, chairman of, 213
Zionist missionary, 41-42, in English
provinces, 115-116, 132
Zionist Organization:
president of, 17-18, 263, 361
resignation of presidency, 338
Weizmann-Feisal Agreement, 245-247 ;
terms of, 247

Weizmann, Feivel, older brother of
Chaim, 5, 8, 14, 19
Weizmann, Michael (1917-1942), mili-
tary service, 422; missing in action,
426-427 ; RAF, enlistment in, 416,
son of Chaim, 174
Weizmann, Moshe, uncle of Chaim, 15
Weizmann, Oser, business with son-in-
law, 34; Chazam, 4; death, 13; father
of Chaim, 3, 28; occupation, 7-9;
Pinsk, move to, 33 ; pro-Ugandist, 85 ;
role as father, 14-15
Weizmann, Rachel, mother of Chaim
28; role as mother, 12-14
Weizmann, Shemuel, lived with Chain

INDEX

497

in Manchester, 114; pro-Ugandist, 86;
revolutionary brother of Chaim, 13
Weizmann, Vera Chatzman, as wife,
71-72; English medical degree and
work, 1 14; home and background, 70-
71; housekeeping, learning, 113-114;
medical officer, 149; medical student,
70; wife of Chaim, 70-73; Zionist
education, 72

Weizmann Institute of Science, begin-
nings, 449-451

Welles, Sumner (1892- ), American

diplomat, 425 ; supported Jewish Na-
tional Home, 435 ; supported UN
decision, 476

^Wertheimer, Rabbi of Geneva, 69
White Paper (i937), partition plan,

388-389

White Paper (1939) : Churchill attack
on, 41 1 ; House of Commons debate,
41 1 ; Malcolm MacDonald defense of,
412; Mandates Commission rejected,
413-414 ; Zionist Organization re-
jected, 412
White Russia, 3

Willstatter, Richard ( 1872-1942) , chem-
ist, experience in exile, 350-352
Wilson, Thomas Woodrow (1856-1924),
repudiation of secret treaties, 194;
support of Balfour Declaration, 208
Winant, John Gilbert (1889-1947),
American Ambassador to Great
Britain, invited Weizmann to Amer-
ica, 426

Wingate, Gen. Sir Francis Reginald
(1861- ), 215

Wingate, Gen. Orde, a tribute by Weiz-
inann, 72, 397-400

Wise, Rabbi Stephen Samuel (1874-
), founder, Zionist Organization
of America, 73

Wissotzky, David (1855-1929), bene-
factor, Techmkum, Haifa, 142
Wolf, Lucien (1857-1930), letter. Con-
joint Committee attitude toward
Zionism, 157-158; secretary, Conjoint
Committee, 157-158, 159, 163
Wolff sohn, David (1856-1914), leader
of Chibath Zion, 46; Zionist Organ-
ization, suitability as president of,
1 12; Zionist presidency, unseated, 122
Woodhead Commission, 396
World Zionist Organizaticm financial
problems, 262

Yakim, peasant, 12

Yehudah, Eliezer ben (1887- ),

popularized Hebrew language, 128

Yishuv, 225, 226

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), 4,
9 , 41

Zangwill, Israel (1864-1926), 63; Jew-
ish Territorial Organization, doomed
to failure, 114-115; Jewish Territorial
Organization, founder of, 88 ; unrecon-
ciled, 160; Zionist Congress, seceded
from, 88

Zemurray, Samuel, non-Zionist, aided
Zionist work, 312-313

Zhitlovsky, Chaim (1865-1943), opposed
Lenin, 50

Zimmennann, Alfred F. M. (1859-1940),
German Under Secretary for Foreign
Affairs, 143

Zion Mule Corps, Gallipoli, 167

Zionism: and international politics, 185-
194; and assimilationist revolutionary
movement, 35, 77; Arab opposition to,
213-2 14 217, 224; beginnings of, 17,
28, 35; Berne rebellion strengthened,
51; Chibath Zion, 16, 24, 36, 43, 46,
125 ; cleavage between East and West,
47 , 52-54 68 , 81-82, 106; conflict be-
tween political and practical approach
to, 68, 81, 105, 107, fusion of, 121-1:^,
132; cultural program, 68; develop-
ment of, 35;. East and Wesfi 40, 53-
54 ; English statesmen uninformed
atx)ut, iii; English support, 179-180;
French attitude toward, 365-368 ; He-
brew language, 27, 128; Herzl con-
tribution to, 46, 49; Herzl, founder of
modern, 25; internal strains political,
164-170; Italian attitude toward, 368-
372 ; Judisch-Russisch WissmshafU
liches Verein, 36; leadership, failure
of western, 54; leadership of, 67;
Manchester, growth of, 105-106;
meaning of, 176-177 ; Motol, 41 ; Oser
Weizmann in, 14; Pinsk, 24-26, 41 ;
practical realities in, 185-194; rich
Jews attitude toward, 75 ; self-expres-
sion in, 54 ; students, Herzl early
support, 43; Techmkum language
fight, anti-German evidence, 144;
wartime America, frustrations, 431-
433; Weizmann, withdrawal from, 95;

INDEX

498

western academic centers, 59; World
War I, called pro- German, 144
Zionism, American, 268-269
Zionism, Italian, 286-287
Zionism and the Jewish Future, English
Zionist Federation, publishers, 182-183
Zionist Commission, 212-239; ChaU
lukkah Jews, funds for, 225-226; let-
ters, Challukkah Jews, complaints,
229; Palestine, trip to, 214-216
Zionist Congress, Jewish state in the
making, 68

Zionist Congresses: Basle (i903)>
Uganda proposal, 83-89; Basle (1931),
337, Weizmann, nonconfidence vote
in, 338; Basle (1937), 386-387; Carls-
bad (1921), 275-277; Geneva (i939),
413; Geneva (1946), 442-443; The
Hague (1907), 122; importance of,
49; London (1900), 56-58; Vienna
(1913)) Hebrew University proposal,
^37 ,

Zionist Executive, Churchill White
Paper, acceptance of, 290-291

Zionist missionary work among Swiss,

70

Zionist movement, crisis in, 56; inade-
quacy of, 92 ; Palestine, workers, 363-

364

Zionist office, London, 183-184
Zionist Organization of America, Qeve-
land Convention, 269-270; Geneva of-
fice, 326 ; income, 253 ; neutrality in
World War I, 165; reorganization,
261; White Paper (i939) rejected,
412;

Zionist Organization, World, 262
Zionists : against Palestine condomin-
ium, 188 ; Americans, critical of
Zionist Organization, 241-242, 247-
250; Americans, split of, 262, 266-
270; Berne, break with revolutionists,
50-51; British Palestine protectorate
demanded, 188, 189, 191 ; Italian, 286-
287; political argument of, I2i ; prac-
tical argument of, 121-122

120 273

IND